


The Weak Beat

by SpaceMatriarchy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Skating, Alternate Universe - Sports, Closeted Character, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2017, Depression, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Charlie Bradbury/Gilda, Minor Donna Hanscum/Jody Mills, Minor Jessica Moore/Sam Winchester, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-01-26 09:31:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 67,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12554448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceMatriarchy/pseuds/SpaceMatriarchy
Summary: Former US figure skating champion Castiel Novak is sure his career is over after a gruesome injury at Nationals. His rink mate’s brother, Dean, begs to differ, and might have found a way to give Cas one last fighting chance to return to the ice. It won’t be easy to turn a broken down singles skater into an ice dancer, but together, they might just be able to pull off a comeback story like the sport has never seen.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Endless thanks to the incredible artist and new friend who was paired with me on this project, Supernatastic101. I like to think we've become relatively close working together, and I've not only enjoyed her company, but also her artistic collaboration. She gave me a lot of encouragement over the last couple months of the challenge, and I'm so happy to have met her! The art is beautiful, too - it's all available to see [here](http://supernatastic101.tumblr.com/post/167543121863/dcbb2017art) and will be embedded in chapters 4 and 13.  
> 

The lights in the darkness were always so glaring and bright during medal ceremonies, the arena dim but for spotlights trained on the skaters, and nobody too concerned about temporarily blinding them. There were flashbulbs going off all across Castiel’s field of vision, and an echoing white noise all around him.

He’d been aiming to stand at the top of the podium, of course, but having had his turn in the middle the last two years at US Nationals, he had to admit that standing on Nathan Chen’s left wasn’t all that bad.

Nathan turned to him, to shake his hand in a sportsmanlike gesture. In the halo of the spotlights, with the inner glow of his success, the boy was shining, and Cas couldn't help but feel pride for the kid. He’d be the one to beat, sure, but a teammate in a few months at World Team Trophy, and at the Olympics next year, if all went well. His handshake was firm. He had the surety of a man twice his age.

“Congratulations,” Cas said.

“Congratulations,” Chen repeated back, before turning to his left to exchange the same pleasantries with Zhou.

In all the noise and clamour, over on the carpet that had been hastily thrown over the ice surface, an official gave the three men on the podium a little wave, let them know it was time for the posed photos that might just make the front page of the local paper's sports section if it was a slow day for hockey. Dismounting from the podium, Novak, Chen, and Zhou crowded in together, held up their respective medals, and smile broadly at the cluster of photographers.

In the moments the flash bulbs flickered, Cas could see nothing but white light.

\---------- 

Cas sat on the bed in his drab beige hotel room in Kansas City, back to the headboard, fondly running a thumb over the surface of the shiny new silver medal in his hand. He hoped it wasn’t unbearably cheesy to say that he wasn’t the least bit upset to have only taken second place at nationals, satisfied in the knowledge that he’d skated to the best of his ability and put on a good show for the audience.

“How can you look so happy with yourself when you lost?” His brother asked him, catching him out in his quiet moment of open, only slightly embarrassing contentment. “You realize that you lost your title?”

“I scored above nineteen other skaters, Gabriel. I’m not too ashamed to have lost to one,” Castiel said. “Besides, I doubt there’s half a dozen skaters in the world who can even think to complete with Chen and his quads on one of his good days. Or did you not realize that was a record breaking program?”

“Pfft. You could do that.”

“Maybe if I was three years younger and sacrificed my entire performance score,” Cas said.

“You’ll show him at Four Continents, Cas. Just tell Anna you want to match him for planned quads and practice the shit out of them,” Gabriel said.

“Bigger fish, Gabriel,” Cas said. “I can't go into a competition with world champions focused on a personal grudge.”

“Geez, is Anna all about sparing your feelings or what?” Gabriel asked. “She's let you get so soft. This is why you don’t pick your coach from your immediate family.”

“The way you’re on my ass all the time, you might as well be my coach, so I’d rethink that statement if I were you.” Castiel stood up, crossed the room, and gently put his new medal in his suitcase, tucked safely between a sweater and a handful of socks. “Besides, give Anna some credit. I’ve come twice as far with her as I ever did with Zachariah.” Cas' old coach in Detroit, the last coach he'd allowed his eldest brother to choose for him before joining Anna and Gabriel in Kansas.

“Hey, you know I’m just giving you both a hard time,” Gabriel reassured him, with a rare toned-down smile and a brotherly clap on the shoulder.

“I know,” Cas said. He smiled, too, without looking up at Gabe. For all that he didn't always enjoy his brother, he loved him. It was more than could be said for most of the Novaks.

“I’m proud of you, bro,” Gabriel said. “And Anna, but we must keep that little tidbit a precious secret.”

“I’ll stay quiet if you and Kali don’t embarrass her and the skating club at the banquet this year.”

“It was one time, Castiel!” Gabriel made a face of the deepest offense, clutching at his chest like a Victorian maiden about to swoon.

“Only one time you slept with her top ladies’ skater, or only one time you did so in a coat check closet?”

“Only one time I got caught.” Gabriel dropped the act and wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. Castiel scoffed. For all that no one would deny Kali her private life, Anna had a right to try and fight Gabe's bad influence on her pupils in what little ways she could, even if they were often completely ineffectual.

There was a knock on the door. Both men’s heads snapped up, and then they looked briefly at one another before Cas moved to answer it.

“She must have heard you,” he said, weeping no tears for Gabriel, who, if it were true, was not long for this world

“Well, it was nice knowing you, bro,” Gabriel joked.

The door swung open, and waiting there in the hall was Anna, and while she seemed thoroughly unamused, she also didn't appear to be pissed off enough to have heard their conversation from behind the door.

“You boys coming to the gala or what?” She asked.

“I was just about to collect my costume,” Cas said.

\---------- 

It’s a common misconception, by the general public, that pairs skating is inherently romantic. That if two people skate pairs together, they’re likely to be romantically involved, or that if two skaters are romantically involved, they ought to skate pairs together. This is categorically untrue in 99% of cases.

Sam Winchester and Jessica Moore were the other 1%.

Sam had been born in Kansas, not ten miles from the rink he now called home, and had left in his mid-teens to follow a coach and a potential new partner to California. He’d come home, eventually, to train with Anna, an accomplished singles skater who’d aged out of competition and set up shop as a coach as many states South of her hometown near Chicago as she could stand, and in a stroke of incredible luck for Sam, that meant a competent coach willing to take him on back home in Lawrence, so he had come home, and he brought his new partner, and girlfriend, Jess, home with him.

Cas caught up with the couple in an empty room off the hallway leading to the rink, where it seemed like half of the population of the Lawrence Skating Club - and most of Anna’s pupils - had taken up temporary residence. Kali, who, like Cas, had taken silver this year, and Gilda, the two ladies singles skaters, sat around the same cheap folding table together. Kevin, a fresh face to the senior division, shared their table, but was ignoring the women, head down in a text book. At the other table in the room, Sam and Jess, newly minted US Champions in pairs, sat chatting with Sam’s brother, Dean.

Just like Cas and Anna had Gabriel, Sam also had a sibling who hung around the skating crowd in a purely social capacity. For all he seemed to know, and for how dedicated he always seemed to be to the sport, Dean had never given anyone any kind of indication that he’d ever skated before in his life. He showed up to practice whenever he could, which was most days, encouraged Sam and treated Jess as one of the family, and even overcame a crippling fear of flying to join Team USA at Sam’s first world championships, but nobody at the club had ever actually seen Dean take to the ice.

(They had all, however, seen Gabriel take to the ice, which had made it abundantly clear why the Novak family had two competitive skaters, and not three.)

Castiel greeted the others as he entered the room, stomping awkwardly on his skate guards, about as graceful, off the ice, as a drunk elephant.

“Is mom with you?” Jess asked, with suspicious urgency, the moment she recognized the newcomer as Castiel. She was referring, in their loving way, to Anna.

Glancing around the room, Cas realized that he’d somehow beaten both his siblings to their impromptu green room, despite the extra time he’d needed to change.

“No,” he said. “I don’t know where she is.”

The room breathed a collective sigh of relief, a breath which Cas realized only then that they’d all been holding, and Gilda retrieved the fifth of scotch that had been haphazardly tossed into a duffel at her feet.

“Oh my God,” Cas said, monotone, not nearly as surprised as he wished he could say he was.

“You want some?” Sam asked.

“Everybody needs to stop telling me things they don’t want Anna to know,” Cas said.

“I’m not involved in any of this and I’m not taking responsibility,” Kevin deadpanned, not looking up from his book, utterly unconcerned.

“Noted,” Cas said.

The door swung open again, suddenly, and everybody jumped. With a sloshy ‘thunk’, the bottle landed back in Gilda’s duffel.

“What?” Gabriel asked, feeling the tension in the room as he entered. The skaters looked around at one another, seemingly trying to come to a consensus without actually talking to each other.

“Cas will rat us out before Gabe will,” Kali reasoned to the others, finally, and then turned back to him. “Gabriel? Scotch?”

Gabriel rubbed his hands together in excitement like a cartoon villain. “I don’t mind if I do!” He said, a grin splitting across his face as he retrieved the bottle from Gilda.

With Gabriel settling solidly in at Kali and Gilda’s table, much to Kevin’s apparent annoyance, Cas decided to take himself over and sit with Jess and the Winchester boys. For all he spent more time at the rink with Kevin, practicing together more often, the age difference between he and Cas was significant, and Kevin put just about all of his energy that wasn’t already consumed by the sport into his current junior year of high school. Instead, often as not, Cas tended to find himself more drawn to the couple, each only two years younger than he was.

“Guys,” Cas said to Sam and Jess, as he sat down, simply in acknowledgement. “Dean.”

“Hey, Castiel,” Dean said. “Silver, right? Kudos.”

“He lost his title, Dean,” Sam scoffed.

“Whatever,” Dean said. “Better than I could have done. We can’t all be golden boys, Sammy.”

“Thank you,” Cas said. “Finally, someone who doesn’t want me to be heartbroken over only being the second best skater in the entire country.”

“Right? Perspective.”

“Perspective is that you can’t take Yuzuru Hanyu if you can’t take Nathan Chen,” Jess teased.

“I’ll take Yuzuru when you take Evgenia,” Cas countered.

Dean laughed, and Sam joined in for a moment before receiving a heavy, if good natured, side eye from his girlfriend, and cut himself off short.

The heavy thunk and swish of the industrial door opening startled them all again. Chatter stopped, shoulders tensed, and Cas turned in time to see Anna just realizing the same tension in the room Cas had felt when he'd walked in. Only, as this was No Fun Coach Novak, the tension was sustained, hanging thick in the air, all eyes glued silently on the new arrival. And Anna, not being deaf and blind, noticed.

“Okay, you’re all freaking me out,” she said. “Is there a problem?”

“Nothing of the sort!” Gabriel shouted, attempting to cover the room’s collective awkwardness with bravado, and probably damning them all with his chewing of the scenery. Anna was clearly not convinced, but chose to move on, regardless, to more immediate concerns.

“Cas, Kali, you’re both running short on time,” she said. “Get on out there.”

“Talk to you later,” Cas said to his little group, as he stood to go.

As Cas, and Kali, and Gabriel hot on Kali’s heels, passed by Anna into the hallway, Anna took a long, conspicuous sniff of the air. She grabbed Gabriel by the back of his shirt and pulled him back into the room. “Let me smell your breath,” she said.

“Aw, come on!” Gabe complained. “Can’t you be cool just like one time?”

Taking it as admission, Anna just sighed, resigned, and turned her gaze to the other assembled skaters, who looked back at her, caught out, like guilty children.

“We love you, mom,” Gilda offered, sheepishly.

 ----------

Jess and the Winchesters were watching from the far side of the barriers when Cas took to the ice for his exhibition program, and he gave them all a little wave when he spotted them. Castiel skated to the center of the rink and posed, waiting for the opening chords of the folksy instrumental piece he’d only barely managed to convince Anna would suit the program.

Exhibition programs were Castiel’s absolute favourite part of every competition. The stress of the stakes and the incessant voice in his head estimating and calculating his technical score all melted away, and it was just Castiel, and the music, and the ice, and his only job was the make the audience smile. It was skating and spinning, so fast, and so easy. The feeling of flying, the same feeling he’d felt somewhere in his chest watching Anna as a child, that pulled on his little heart and brought him onto the ice to begin with. Nothing pleased him more in his life than these brief chances to share that feeling with the world.

The music began, up tempo, a little jaunty, all folk guitar and bare bones percussion, sending Castiel across the rink to one end, then the other, feeling out the beat and building his momentum.

The first jump - a triple Salchow, not his most impressive jump, technically, but chosen for his surety that he could perform it cleanly and beautifully - went off without a hitch. His mind clear, his heart swelled at the white noise of the crowd when he landed it. He gave himself a wide berth on it, took himself most of the way around the rink to decompress before easing into as fast a combo spin as he could manage.

It was the triple axel near the middle that ruined him.

The take off felt fine, in the moment, but Cas realized it was going wrong somewhere between the first and third rotations. The torque was not as strong as he'd have liked it to be, and if nothing else he was going to struggle to make that additional half rotation, but by the time he processed this it was too late to double it. To make matters worse, he was feeling his center of balance lilt, heavily. He was going to land, only barely, swerve off to the side, and end up on his ass, he realized. Better to fall at a gala than in front of judges, at least, but he couldn't think of a way to save the landing, and his own body, at the mercy of physics, suddenly felt so far out of his own control, and the adrenaline was already pumping.

When his blade touched down, about a quarter of a rotation too early, something went sideways, fast. He did swerve, a harder turn than he could have predicted sending him almost once more around after touch down, and then his ankle rolled. It rolled further than it ought to have been able to, until his knee hit the ice with a crack he could hear clearly, and feel in his teeth.

None of this hurt, at first. There was a tense moment where he knew his foot should not be able to be where it was in relation to the rest of his leg, a realization of something being terribly, unnaturally wrong. A moment of numbness and cold. And then the limb exploded in hot pain, to the other extreme, his entire consciousness narrowing down to the triplet points of agony, like his body was imploding around everything from the knee down.

He was still falling, still, like it was in slow motion, and Cas screamed. In shock, his reflex to break the ongoing fall of his upper body was overcome by the reflex to grasp at the injury, and he reached down instead of out. He realized the mistake when all he could see was the mirror shine of the ice surface, too late, and there was just the barest instant in which he had perfect clarity.

It was over.

The performance was over. The program was over. His career was over. He hoped to God that the concussion he was about to recieve wasn’t about to end his life, too.

There was another loud crack, as his skull hit the ice, but he didn’t hear it.

 ----------

It took all of about three seconds for Sam’s buddy to go from sixty to zero.

Dean had been standing with his brother and Jess, leaning against the barrier to admire Novak’s program, when the guy went down like a sack of potatoes on the opposite side of the rink, and a few of the spectators closest to the action started to scream. Castiel wasn’t getting right back up like a skater should. From what Dean could see, Castiel wasn’t moving at all.

He spotted a splash of red on the pristine white ice, growing slowly under Castiel’s head. The music abruptly cut out.

 _Holy shit,_ Dean thought.

“Oh my God,” Sam breathed, and Jess was already booking it along the barrier as fast as she could in her skates.

“Holy shit,” Dean said, out loud this time. He turned to follow Sam, who himself was hot on Jess’ heels.

The medics were out on the ice before they rounded to the nearest gate to where Cas had fallen, where Kali was all but physically holding Gabriel back from following them out into the rink. They, and Anna, waited by the gate, leaning over the barrier to see better, and Anna was eerily still, barely breathing. Her hands trembled faintly against the top of the boards.

Christ, that was her brother out there, Dean realized, a fact he knew but hadn't needed to _understand_ until just then, and he was stopped in his tracks with the thought. He had no idea whether he should be stepping in and offering help, or standing out of the way and letting whatever was about to happen play out. He had no idea if there was anything he could do, anything in his power to help Castiel, or his family. If there was even anything _anybody_ could do to help Castiel at this point or if, he wondered grimly, it was too late already.

“Is he dead?” Asked a shaky voice somewhere behind Dean, and he turned. The ice dance champions, a brother and sister from New York, were huddled, clinging to each other off to the side, wide eyed. The woman wasn’t even looking at Dean, he realized, hadn’t been asking him, just giving a voice to a terrible fear that must have been sitting at the back of everybody’s throats.

“I don’t know,” Dean said, honestly, speaking for the sake of speaking when silence itself felt like some kind of terrible admission.

When Dean looked back, Castiel was on a stretcher, being rushed through a door backstage and followed by an urgent procession - Anna and Gabriel, the family, with Kali, several event officials, and Sam and Jess bringing up the rear. Dean caught a glimpse of the form on the stretcher. Exposed bone. A face too bloodied to be instantly recognizable. He held himself back. He had nothing to contribute to this. Cas had his friends and his family, and the well trained medics, and Dean would just be getting underfoot and in the way.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice over the arena loudspeaker, betraying more uncertainty than he’d surely have like to. “Our gala cannot continue at this time. Please hold on.”

There was a set of thick, crimson pools on the ice where Castiel had been lying.

Dean turned to the ice dancers, as if they, by their virtue as real skaters, people who should belong here, would have all the answers, but they both reflected his expression of helpless, creeping terror right back at him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I doubt she'll ever read this, but I promised a friend and co-worker I'd make mention of a triple Salchow because it's the most difficult jump she achieved in her time skating singles. Hi, Christian. I did the thing.


	2. Chapter 2

The six months following US Nationals proceeded like this:

Eight minutes after Castiel Novak fell, he regained consciousness as he was loaded into an ambulance.

One hour and twelve minutes after the fall, organizers officially cancelled the remainder of the gala, in light of the irreparably bad mood and the unwillingness of many of the other skaters to continue.

Two days after that, Castiel Novak announced through his coach that he would be unable to complete the season, surprising no one, and promptly disappeared from the public eye.

One month after, Nathan Chen went on to take Four Continents, beating out both Yuzuru Hanyu and Shoma Uno for gold.

Two months after, the Japanese skaters put him back in his place at the World Championships in Helsinki, sharing the competition’s first all Asian men’s podium with Jin Boyang of China.

Three months after, Team USA came second at World Team Trophy, and both Moore/Winchester and Kali Sahni, along with their coach, Anna Novak, gave Castiel shout outs at the kiss and cry. The season ended quietly.

Four months after, most skaters got back to work after their short breaks, performing in ice shows or teasing out the first details of music selections for the coming Olympic season.

Five months after, a few forum threads popped up speculating as to whether or not Castiel Novak would be returning next season, given his continued absence from all selfies and videos posted by his rink mates.

Six months after, Sam Winchester and Jessica Moore were engaged.

 ----------

Castiel heard his cell phone ring, but if he was being honest, he was trying resolutely to ignore it.

Groaning softly, he rolled over and tugged the blanket up over his head to block out the sound. The phone rang twice more before falling silent, and Cas let out the tense breath he had been holding, relaxing back into his nest of blankets.

Then the ringing began again.

“Ugh,” Cas grumbled. He sighed, relented, and pulled himself to sit up before rolling off the sofa he’d fallen asleep on the night before. Bleary eyed, he took in the room, midday sunlight streaming in through his windows and Animal Planet still droning on quietly on the television. He stood, aching a little, and stumbled into the kitchen, following the sound of his ringtone, in the junk trap tray on the countertop where his phone often lived alongside his keys and a handful of pocket change.

 _SAM_ , read the display. Cas blinked at it a few times, haunted by the last dregs of morning amnesia, but soon remembered, and groaned again. Sam. Sam, whose invitation to a night out with the rink family he’d blown off the night before to instead burrow into his sofa, watch Netflix in his pajamas, and stubbornly avoid anyplace he could expected to find any more skaters than just Sam or Jess.

Cas couldn’t bring himself to actually hit the ‘decline call’ button, and instead he ashamedly flipped the phone over, screen down, on the counter, and sunk to the floor as he was hiding from something, as if Sam himself might be watching him through the kitchen window as he refused to pick up the phone.

The ringing eventually stopped again, and, exhaling, Cas pulled himself back up by the edge of the counter top. Gingerly, he turned the phone back over to check the time. 11:24 was far too late to have slept in the first place, but God, Cas was still exhausted. He stood, zoned out in the kitchen, vaguely trying to pep talk himself into making a pot of coffee instead of just crawling back into the warm, soft blanket burrito in his living room and going back to sleep for another week, at least.

He popped open the coffee machine and threw out the spent grounds from two days previous, but the will to actually carry through the rest of the process just wasn’t there. It was too many steps, felt like too much effort.

Better to just go back to bed, Castiel decided.

He was nearly out of the kitchen and back to his blanket pile before the phone rang again. Backpedaling, he glanced again at the display. This time, it was Gabriel.

“Hello?” Cas said, answering the call.

“I just think you outta know that your anti-social tendencies are becoming my problem, here,” Gabriel said. “Sam-squatch wants to know where the heck you were last night.”

Cas softly groaned into the phone as his only response, leaning his weight on the kitchen door frame.

“Don’t avoid his calls, bro. He just wants to make sure you’re alright,” Gabe continued.

“I know,” Cas said. He dragged himself back into the living room and tossed himself down onto the sofa.

“So?” Gabriel asked.

“So what?”

“Where actually were you? Tell me you have an excuse.”

“I don’t,” Cas admitted. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me,” Gabriel said, and then there was a pause. “Wait, hold on, Sam wants the phone.”

“No, no!” Cas shouted, reflexively. “Gabriel, don’t--”

“Heya, Cas,” Sam said, taking over the line, and Castiel hastily shut his mouth before he could further betray his disinterest in answering for his behaviour.

“Sam,” Cas acknowledged. “Sorry about the other night. I was exhausted, I lost track of time. It’s totally my fault.”

“Can Jess and I swing by your place later today?” Sam asked, steamrolling right on past the apology.

Sam’s apparent sudden interest in meeting face to face prompted a little spark of panic in Cas’ chest, but he wasn’t going to blatantly deny Sam now. Cas glanced around the living room, at the mail and newspapers and dirty dishes scattered across every available surface in his home. “I mean, I guess you could,” he said, against his better judgement.

Sam was quiet a moment, and Cas heard him heave a deep sigh. “You know we’re not mad, right, Cas? If you can’t go out, we’re happy to come to you, we just hate not knowing what’s up.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas said, and without thinking, he began compulsively running his thumb along the surgery scar on his right knee.

“No, I get it,” Sam said, as if that were even remotely possible. “Just, don’t shut us out, okay? We don’t expect you to be in top form all the time, it’s just hard when you go dark like that.”

“Okay,” Cas said, for anything to say that wasn’t another apology. He had no further defence of or explanation for his actions. The least he could give Sam was an empty promise to improve.

“So we’re okay?” Sam asked. “I’ll see you later?”

“Yes, of course, Sam,” Cas said, and with very few further pleasantries, hung up the phone.

 ----------

The apartment took a couple hours of cleaning, but in all honesty, ‘cleaning’ for Cas looked a lot more like 10% cleaning, 85% procrastination, and 5% staring at the growing pile of dishes in his sink with an anxious pit slowly growing in his belly. After a few hours of this, his home was at least kind of presentable. It wasn’t looking _good_ , exactly, by the time Sam and Jess knocked on the door, but it no longer looked as if Castiel had been sleeping on the sofa, which he had been, and eating nothing but take out and microwave dinners, which was also the case.

Cas changed into jeans and a sweater, the latter to block out the chill he’d been dealing with previously by refusing to leave the warmth of his blankets for more than a few minutes at a time, and the former more to cover the angry red web of scars running from ankle to knee than for any other reason.

“Hey, you!” Jess greeted him, warmly, at the door, bright and full of excitement as if he hadn’t gotten a concerned lecture from her boyfriend not six whole hours before. She pulled him into a tight hug, and when she let go, Sam swept in for his own friendly embrace.

They didn’t need to tell him the news they’d come to share, after all. They hadn’t gotten three feet past the front door when Cas spotted the sparkling new engagement ring on Jess’ finger, and seeing it sparked the happiest rush he’d felt since in the six months since nationals. Cas dragged each of them into another round of excited hugging, and spent several minutes reverently holding Jess’ left hand to admire the jewel, while she cheerily recounted the proposal.

“This is fantastic,” Cas said, looking between Sam and Jess. “I have beer, I think.”

He was already passing into the kitchen when Sam said “yeah, that’d be awesome.”

“We’re having a get together to celebrate next week,” Jess said, when Cas returned with the three open bottles. He sad down beside Jess on the sofa - Sam had taken it upon himself to sit on the coffee table, leaving Cas a space on the sofa. Cas wasn’t sure if Sam knew Cas noticed that he’d taken to leaving the most comfortable spots to sit or lean free, as if a little discomfort was going to set his physiotherapy back any more than his forgetfulness around doing his stretches already had.

“That’s great,” Cas said.

“And obviously, we’d really love for you to come,” Sam elaborated.

“Of course,” Cas said. “Of course I’ll be there. This is important for you both.”

Neither Sam, nor Jess, responded right away. Sam pulled a little face he probably hadn’t meant to show, but Sam’s face had always been so expressive, whether he wanted it to be or not. Cas didn’t need to ask what their concerns were.

“I wouldn’t miss your engagement party,” Cas said. “It’s not like the pub nights or the group hang outs I miss. I know this is important.”

“I just get the sense that it’s the being around people you have the problem with,” Jess explained. “We get it! We just want to make sure that if it’s going to be difficult for you, we find out now instead of later, so maybe we can find a solution.”

“Is it the walking or driving being hard on your leg?” Sam asked. “If we sent somebody to pick you up, would that help?”

“My leg doesn’t bother me that much nowadays,” Cas admitted. “I don’t know, maybe it is people.”

“It’ll just be Sam’s family and our friends from the rink,” Jess promised. “Not a ton of people, mostly people you already know.”

“I’m sure it’ll be absolutely fine,” Castiel insisted. “I mean it. I wouldn’t miss this. I don’t want to.”

“You just…” Jess trailed off, gathered her thoughts, and then continued. “You know you’re allowed to ask for help, right?”

“I _promise_ , Jess,” Cas said, sighing. “And I’ll ask for help when I find something that you can do to help. But there’s nothing you can do right now. This is just a mood. I just need to pull myself out of it.”

“Okay,” Sam said, trying to placate Cas’ sudden internalized frustration, and his exhaustion with their excessive concern. “We hear you, Cas, we just want you to know that we’re here.”

“Being forced to get out of the house will be good for me. I know that. You both keeping in touch is you being here, and helping, and I appreciate it immensely.” Cas sighed, a little drained, and took a sip of his beer. “But really, don’t… don’t worry about me. This isn’t about me. This is about you two.”

He held up his beer in offering of an informal toast. “You both deserve every ounce of happiness and love you can wring out of this life. You’re so lucky to have each other and I’m so happy for you.”

Sam and Jess each smiled, and gently tapped the necks of their bottles against Cas’ outstretched one in turn.

“Thanks, Cas,” Sam said, quietly.

Castiel knew he couldn’t erase their worries, couldn’t make any real promises, but if their minds had been eased for the time being, maybe he’d done what he could.

 ----------

Saturday rolled around a lot faster than Castiel felt it should have any right to. The party felt distant for days, until suddenly it was far too close at hand and the worry started to eat at him. In the intervening time he could have spent getting ready, psyching himself up, he instead stewed, and worried, and watched half a season of Law and Order.

Sam called at one in the afternoon to remind him, and Cas carefully did not mention that the call had woken him up from a bizarrely timed four hour sofa nap. Gabriel called an hour later, and soon a half dozen texts had piled up in his inbox over the course of the afternoon.

 _will u be @ the winchesters’ 2nite?_ Anna asked. _been missing seeing u!_

 _you sure you don’t want a ride?_ Gabriel texted.

 _Sam might actually cry if you don’t show up………._ said Kevin. _please……… for the sake of all of us not having to hear about it at practice for the next 8 years…………_

At three, Cas told himself he should go shower. At four, he told himself he needed to at least start thinking about pulling his suit out of the closet. At five, he promised himself he’d turn off the TV at the end of this episode and go get changed.

At six, he was officially late, and, that killing the last of his resolve, he curled in on himself in a little ball of shame and guilt. Being late felt like more of a failure than not going at all and at least being able to avoid any immediate consequences. But the clock on the display of the cable box was sitting there, blinking, taunting him with the failure of the later and later hour, so he turned the TV off, rolled over, shut his eyes, and wallowed in it as he tried to stubbornly will himself into a restless sleep.

This was how it always went, since the accident. People invited him out. Getting ready and getting out there felt like moving a mountain. He dreaded the idea of having to talk to people he didn’t already know, putting on the mask of his best self when that self was long gone. He dreaded talking to half the people he’d known for years, too, the discomfort of the interaction worse when it was just another layer on top of the disappointment. He already knew he’d spend the entire night wanting to go home and go back to bed. So he stayed home and stayed in bed.

But this time, it wasn’t casual. It wasn’t drinks at the bar by the rink, or “come over for dinner, it’s been a while” or an invitation to take a look at somebody’s new program. This time it had been _important_. This was a celebration of his best friends’ love and the future they would share, and he’d made them both a promise.

And still, he couldn’t force himself to get up off the sofa. Still.

Swaddled in his blanket cocoon, Castiel managed to doze off. He faded in and out in the grey area between disconnected fragments of dreaming and painful awareness of time marching on around him, knowing he had somewhere he should be.

A knock on his apartment door startled him up, shocked him out of sleep. He scrambled out of the bundle of blankets and into wakefulness, wondering how long he’d been asleep, and, far more keenly, who was out there and just how mad were they with him.

Cas pressed his face to the peephole in the door. It was Dean, and calm as the man seemed to be in that moment, casually rocking back on the heels of his uncharacteristically shiny dress shoes as he waited, Cas knew from his reputation how hot his temper could become on his brother’s behalf, and couldn’t let Dean’s patient demeanor soothe his anxiety.

Glancing down at himself, and around the room, he realized with a dull kind of panic that he was going to have to answer the door in his boxers and t-shirt - irrationally, if he made Dean wait at the door while he went to his room and changed into sweatpants, he felt things would somehow be terribly worse. He took the briefest moment to psych himself up, steeling himself against Dean’s impending judgement, and pulled open the front door.

“Dean,” he said in greeting, with a tight smile.

“Cas,” Dean said, and his answering smile was surprisingly easy, though his eyes darted to Cas’ clothes, around the living room, and Cas was certain he saw right into the embarrassing state of his life.

“I fell asleep,” Cas said, almost compulsively, and as if it was any kind of excuse.

“No problem, dude. Why don’t you get dressed and we’ll drive on over?”

“Oh, no, you don’t need to wait for me,” Cas said. “You go. Don’t worry, I’ll be along in a little while.”

“I can wait. I really don’t mind,” Dean said, unnervingly agreeable.

“I haven’t showered, I should probably shave…”

A downward twitch pulled at the side of Dean’s mouth. “Look, honestly? Sam’s really betting on me to bring you back. He insists. I don’t wanna be a pain in your ass or anything, but he might actually kill me if I show up solo, you know?”

Cas didn’t answer. So much of him just wanted to dig in his heels and refuse to go, despite the crushing regret he knew would keep haunting him. Instead, he stood in the doorway, trying to think of a newer, better excuse, useless, until his mind ran blank and he wound up waiting for something, anything, to break the silence. Maybe if he ignored Dean long enough, he’d just go away, along with the rest of this shitty situation.

“Okay,” Dean said, when Cas hadn’t spoken for an uncomfortably long time. “I hear you don’t like to go out much, but I hadn’t realized it was, uh… is it like an anxiety thing? Nothing bad’s gonna happen, Cas, I promise. I’ll drive real safe, okay? Under the speed limit and everything.”

“It’s not an anxiety thing,” Cas said, jumping to his own defence. “I’m not afraid to go out, I just don’t like it.”

“Why not?”

“I just don’t like people. It’s not a big deal.” Cas sighed, and put a hand on the door as if he was going to close it in Dean's face. “I’m sorry, I just don’t think I can. Not tonight. I’m wasting your time, and you really should just go back to the party.”

“It’s just some guys from the rink and my family,” Dean said. “My family is like three people, dude. It’s nobody.”

“I don’t want to see anybody from the rink.” Cas began a subtle retreat back into the safety of his living room, pushing the door partly closed - not shutting Dean outside, but hinting that the conversation was over - as he blindly stepped backwards a few small paces, to try and shut out Dean’s arguments. His stress was getting away from him.

“Why not? They all love you, you know. They talk about you all the time.”

“I can’t go!” Cas snapped. He hadn’t meant to shout, but all of a sudden he felt himself shutting down. He brought a hand up to cover his face, blocking the whole situation out and just forcing himself to breathe, steady, in and out. Why couldn’t Dean just go away and leave him alone? Didn’t everybody know that this is just what Castiel did? He already made himself feel badly enough - he really didn’t deserve Sam’s brother giving him a lecture about it, too.

Dean gave him half a minute of space, hovering uncertainly in the doorway, and into his spiralling thoughts, Cas added the embarrassment of having a total mental breakdown in front of a practical stranger, and in his underwear, no less.

“Cas?” Dean asked, gently.

“I can’t,” was all Cas could force himself to say.

“Hey, deep breaths, alright?” Dean said. He came fully into the apartment and shut the door behind him, gently steered Castiel towards the sofa with a light hand at his elbow. “Why don’t you sit down?”

Numbly, obediently, Castiel did. He still couldn’t quite look at Dean, and kept his eyes down, allowed himself to just sink into the cushions, and he suddenly felt so much like crying - the weeks of fatigue and emptiness giving way to hot shame and hopelessness.

Dean disappeared into Cas’ kitchen and returned a minute later with a glass of water. He sat across from Cas on the coffee table and handed the glass over. Cas took it, and he held it in both hands, feeling like his fingers were barely his own, like he couldn’t trust the muscles.

“You wanna talk?” Dean asked, a few minutes later, after Cas had downed the entire glass.

“I’m sorry,” Cas said, settled somewhat. “This is embarrassing.”

“I’m not here to judge you, buddy,” Dean said. When Cas finally looked up, he found nothing on Dean’s face but genuine concern.

“It’s not everybody. Mostly it’s other skaters,” Cas said.

“Yeah?”

“I can’t talk to them,” Cas said. “I hate it.”

“Sam says you seem fine when it’s just him and Jess,” Dean said.

“They don’t want to talk about skating with me,” Cas said. One hand left the glass and went to his knee, to the newfound nervous tick of tracing the scar there.

“They’re all really proud of you, Cas. Nobody thinks badly of you for what happened.”

“I just don’t want to know that they can still do things I can’t, anymore,” Cas admitted, voice almost a whisper, as he dropped his gaze back down to his lap.

Dean exhaled. “Okay.”

“Oh my God,” Cas said, curling into himself a little. “That sounds horrible. I’m being so selfish.”

“Hey, no, buddy,” Dean said, putting one hand over Cas’ on his knee to steady him. “You never make that their problem, right? I’m not saying jealously is a good thing, but the only person you’re hurting is yourself.”

Cas couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“Okay,” Dean began again, after a moment of thought. “Okay, Cas, let’s make a deal. We’ll get you cleaned up, take you to the party, you just need to go say hi to the happy couple - and I promise you, you will make their night doing it - and I swear, Cas, I’ll stay with you all night. You can hang out with the family in the kitchen, I’ll run interference and keep the other skaters away from you. And the very second it’s too much and you need to go home, I’ll bring you right back here, okay?”

“Dean, you don’t have to--”

“But I’m gonna,” Dean said. “If not for you, then for Sam. You don’t know how much he wants you there. So I need you to tell me if that’s something you can handle. Do we have a deal?”

Cas hesitated. “I’ll need to shower, first,” he said.

In his peripheral vision, he caught Dean’s shoulder relaxing, and he cracked a smile. “You don’t know how happy I am to hear that, Cas.”

 ----------

Dean drove them out of town, in his classic black muscle car, and further out beyond the suburbs, and Castiel was starting to wonder just how far from Lawrence they were going to drive when Dean pulled into a gravel driveway behind a rusty wire fence. A faded wooden sign on the gate read _Singer Salvage and Auto Body._

The property was jam packed full of cars, and only the state of the vehicles themselves - the distinction between the shiny, well kept cars and the rusted shells, missing doors and windows and wheels - marked the invisible line between the ‘visitor’s parking’ section of gravel and the real junk yard.

The house was about as run down as the lot, peeling paint and a few of the windows boarded up on the second floor, but Castiel could tell that it had been built a big, beautiful Kansas farmhouse, though the farm itself was long gone. Greenery traded for steel. Growth replaced with rot. He wondered how long it had been since anything more than weeds had grown here.

“Is this your house?” Cas asked, as they exited the car. He was trying to play it off casually, so as not to betray his concern.

“No, not really,” Dean said, starting the walk towards the house with Cas following behind. “I’ve got an apartment in town, I just work here. Sam and I spent a lot of time here as kids, though. Our uncle owns and operates the place. Well…” Dean paused, and corrected himself. “He’s kind of our uncle. Sam and I don’t really have any blood relatives left, so family is a bit of a fast and loose concept around here.”

“So he’s a friend of your parents?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, in a way,” Dean said. “Dad worked here sometimes. Bobby kept taking him back when he couldn’t find other work, and even when dad wasn’t here, Bobby would look out for us if dad needed the help. Technically, he works from home, so he could at least give us some TV dinners and a stack of Clint Eastwood movies on VHS and make sure we didn’t blow ourselves up. It was a hell of a lot better than nothing.”

“Did your father work a lot?” Cas asked.

“Sometimes,” Dean said. He shrugged. “Honestly, it’s kind of a long story. It’s kind of deep. This isn’t the time and place for it.”

“I understand,” Cas said. “I’ll leave it alone. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not a big secret, don’t worry. It’s just a long story.”

“Sam never mentioned anything about that,” Cas said. “Mostly his childhood stories are about you.”

Dean smiled to himself, a little proud. “Yeah, well, Sam doesn’t really know everything. It was different for him, you know? He got out of here in high school.”

“I see.”

“Really, Cas, don’t worry about it,” Dean said. “Let’s just focus on getting you through tonight.”

They climbed the sagging porch steps together, and Dean pulled open the creaky screen door before pausing to turn back to Cas, door propped open with his foot.

“You ready?” He asked.

Cas craned his neck, looked past Dean, into the dimly lit hallway beyond, and sighed. “I suppose I have to be,” he said.

“Deep breaths, dude,” Dean reassured him. “I got you.”

Cas did his best to comply, forcing his shoulders to relax and trying to release the tension in his jaw, and with a nod, followed Dean inside the old house.

He couldn’t see anybody besides Dean, at first, but he could hear them. The party guests - the other skaters, it must be - were chatting in the next room. He listened, confidence flagging, picking out scraps of voices he recognized. There was no turning back, now, he realized, as the screen door swung shut behind him.

Before the dread had to chance to really settle in, Cas felt Dean put a gentle hand on his upper back, and the other man led him quickly down the hall. They passed a wide entryway, first, through which Cas saw them. All the people he’d been dreading - his friends, he tried to remind himself - congregated in a sizeable sitting room with mismatched chairs and overstuffed bookshelves. In the fleeting moments as the passed by the door, he took in the shocks of colour of the women’s dresses, recognized in brief flashes the faces turned towards the door, and was struck by a gripping, instantaneous panic.

It was the first time he’d seen most of them in months, these people who by all accounts he could have allowed to be his confidants and supporters, and who, in a few cases, were his literal family. And yet, it felt like all the air went out of him. He felt like they should all have been furious with him, but he couldn’t say why. He felt like they shouldn’t want to see him, though he’d knew they’d only ever shown him that they did. He felt like shit, and then he felt like shit for having the audacity to feel like shit in the first place.

Dean must have noticed Cas dragging his feet, distracted, because before they hit the next door along the hall, he stopped and turned to him.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

And Cas realized that in that moment, he’d seen every one of the people he’d been pushing away for six months, and somehow, miraculously, his world was still spinning.

Maybe, just maybe, Dean had been right. Maybe he had only been hurting himself, all this time. Maybe the anticipation of the thing was really worse than the thing itself. In spite of it all, the overwhelming feeling was one of relief.

“Yes, strangely,” he replied, still dazed, a little lost in his own revelations.

Dean shrugged, satisfied, and pushed open the next door on the left, leading Cas into a lived in little kitchen where a handful of dressed down, friendly looking folks were sitting on folding chairs and rickety wooden stools in a loose circle around a wooden dining table. A sliding door opened up into the sitting room Cas had just seen.

“I’m back,” Dena announced to the room.

“Is this Sam’s friend?” Asked an older man - the uncle, Cas presumed. The man himself was as weathered as his house, but his eyes were bright.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “This is Cas. Cas, this is Bobby, who I was telling you about. That’s Jo, who we grew up with.” He indicated a skinny blonde about Sam’s age. “And her mom, Ellen.”

Jo smiled at him in greeting, and Ellen, a sturdier woman than her daughter, rougher around the edges, but friendly, reached across the table to shake his hand. “Hi,” she said.

“Hello.”

“And that’s Charlie. She’s a friend of mine,” Dean said, moving behind a bubbly girl with short red hair to clap her on the shoulder. “She works from home near the rink, so we hang out at the Starbucks. Plus she dragged me into her D&D party, so there’s that.”

Charlie chose to forgo the handshake, and instead stood, quickly crossed the room, and wrapped Cas up in a tight bear hug.

“Oh,” Cas said simply, surprised.

“I’ve seen you skate!” Charlie said, when she let go, still clinging to his upper arms and beaming brightly at him, as if they were long separated friends. “You’re awesome.”

“Thank you,” Cas said.

“It sucks that your season got cut so short this year,” she continued. “Do you think you’ll be back in the fall?”

Cas’ panic rose up again at the question, suddenly thrust directly into the subject he wanted to avoid the most. Before he had a chance to stammer out an answer, however, Dean mercifully interrupted.

“Charlie, be nice,” he said firmly.

“I am being nice!” Charlie said.

“I promised Cas no skating talk,” Dean said. “Leave him alone.”

Charlie did a subtle little double take, recognition of the boundary she’d overstepped crossed her face, and she shrunk back a little. Cas was quietly grateful.

“Sorry,” she said, sheepishly.

“That’s alright,” Cas replied. “You didn’t know.”

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said, redirecting the conversation to safer waters. “Why don’t I go get Sam and Jess in here so you can say hi?”

“That sounds good, thank you,” Cas said, and watched Dean slip away through the sliding doors.

“So, Cas,” Bobby began, almost as soon as Dean had left. “Besides skating, what have you got going on?”

Cas didn’t immediately realize he didn’t have an answer to that question, and stammered for something to say that wasn’t focused on take out or television shows, which he was sure would make him seem unbearably pathetic.

“Um, I’m not really sure,” he said, honestly.

“Have you got a girl? Another job, maybe?” Bobby asked.

“C’mon, Bobby,” Jo interrupted. “Skaters don’t have time for any of that junk.”

“What about your family?” Ellen asked, instead.

“Well, Sam and Jess’ coach is my sister, actually,” Cas said, heaving an internal sigh of relief for a topic of conversation he could handle, even if he knew it wasn’t especially interesting.

“Anna?” Bobby asked.

“Yes,” Cas said. “And my brother, Gabriel, should be here tonight.”

“Did you grow up ‘round here?” Ellen asked. “You don’t sound like you’re from Kansas.”

“We were raised in Illinois,” Cas replied. “We’ve only lived here for a few years. I’ve spent most of my career in Chicago or Detroit.”

“We’re lucky you kids picked Lawrence, then. Gave Sam a chance to come home, and that brought Dean home. I missed those two,” Bobby said. He took a sip of his beer. “Don’t tell them I said that, though. They’ll think I’m going soft on ‘em.”

“Where was Dean? I didn’t think he was with Sam in California.”

“Hm.” Bobby seemed to think about it for a moment. “All over, I guess. Long story. Not mine to tell.”

Dean, it seemed, had an awful lot of long stories.

“It’s _kind of_ your story to tell,” Ellen said, though she didn’t seem to be trying too hard to convince Bobby of anything.

“I’m in it,” Bobby said. “That don’t make it my story.”

“It’s fine,” Cas said, speaking perhaps a little too quickly, trying to placate the situation. “It’s not my place. I didn’t mean--”

“Hey!” Charlie interrupted, slumping in her seat, back bending at an angle that could not have been comfortable, to reach over and kick Cas’ chair. When he looked over, she was smiling at him. “You didn’t know, right?”

Cas smiled, shyly, right back, the tension broken. His heart still felt like it was racing at a mile a minute, but these people treated him with so few expectations, and so much leeway. It was comfortable, nothing like how he was brought up. No airs of being anything bigger than the humble, human people they were. The pressure had begun to ease from inside his chest, tension draining out of his muscles.

“Can we please find a subject that nobody’s sore about?” Jo asked.

A bit of a devious look crossed Ellen’s face, and she prepared to humiliate her daughter as only a truly proud and loving single parent can. “Jo used to be Sam’s partner,” she said. “They won their little pee-wee regional championship and everything.”

Jo’s eyes turned cold as she spun around to her mother. “Yeah, for like five minutes, when we were nine!”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” Ellen said with a smirk that implied she was not in the least bit sorry. “Still counts.”

“You’re the one who wanted to change the subject, Jo,” Bobby said, barely hiding a smirk with another sip of beer. “You didn’t say what to.”

Jo looked to Charlie for back up, and when Charlie just laughed nervously, she turned instead to Cas. He felt himself go all ‘deer in the headlights’ for a split second, but was saved by footsteps approaching from behind him, and a hand falling to his shoulder.

“I leave you guys alone for five minutes and you’re stirring shit?” Dean asked.

“I’m just defending myself,” Jo said.

“She’s being a baby,” Ellen snarked. “I didn’t even bring out the photo albums.”

“Cas?” Dean asked. Cas twisted in his seat to look to his new friend. “Verdict, Who’s stirring the shit?”

“I… I don’t really want to answer that,” Cas admitted. Dean laughed, the hand on Cas’ shoulder giving him a good natured pat.

“Wise choice, son,” Bobby said.

“Anywho,” Dean said, shifting to conversation. “Look who I found!”

Cas turned the rest of the way around in his chair and saw, behind Dean, Jess and Sam, standing in the doorway to the sitting room. Jess gave him a cheery little wave, just a waggle of her fingers. Smiling, Cas stood and joined them, being pulled into a hug by Sam.

“We’re glad you made it, man,” Sam said. “Better late than never.”

Jess swooped in and also gave Cas a squeeze. “Sorry for sending the cavalry after you.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Cas said. “I’m sorry it came to that. I should have just gotten a ride from Gabe.”

“I don’t mind,” Dean said. “Besides, you’re here now. That’s what matters.”

“We know you don’t like to ask for help,” Sam said. “That’s why Dean was on standby in the first place - in case driving was going to be a problem for you.”

Cas felt his genuine smile falter for a moment, just a second, before he plastered a false one over top of it. Sam was still looking for Castiel’s struggles in all the wrong places, and Cas wasn’t certain if Sam was better off with the truth or not, if there was any point whatsoever in burdening him and Jess with it. In any case, tonight was not the night for that discussion. Times and places.

“Congratulations,” Cas said to them both, unwilling to discuss this any further. “You look beautiful tonight, Jess.”

Jess smiled and brushed a bit of imaginary dirt off her skirt. “Well…”

“It’s true,” Dean said. “You do.”

“Hey,” Sam laughed. “She’s _my_ fiancée.”

“Relax, Sammy, this isn’t like Penny Markle. Jess is a _lady_ ,” Dean said. “Although, damn, Penny Markle would make decent best man speech material.”

“Only if you want to look like a sleazy asshole,” Sam said.

Dean laughed it off, and then, apparently remembering his promise to Castiel all of a sudden, lowered his voice. “Hey, by the way, Cas is going to hang out in here, okay?”

“Why?” Jess asked, turning to Cas, concerned. Despite her good intentions, she was really putting him on the spot.

“I, uh…” Cas faltered. He searched for an explanation that didn’t open up the entire can of worms, a mess of a situation he barely understood himself. “It’s just… people,” he said, leaving the phrase pathetically half-complete.

“They’re your friends,” Jess said, confused.

“I’m not ready to be with them yet,” Cas said. “I’m sorry.”

In his peripheral vision, Cas saw Sam’s face falter, and a part of him knew Sam was finally realizing, in that moment, that he hadn’t been helping all this time. That he hadn’t been capable of helping. Cas felt a pang of guilt at letting it go this far, at not being honest and asking for help earlier, but most of all for allowing it to come to this point, now, on what should have been such a happy evening for Sam.

“Okay,” Jess said. “You know I won’t bug you about it. But thank you for coming, Cas. It really does mean a lot to us.”

Castiel chose not to bring up the fact that he hadn’t really been given a choice in the matter. “Thank you for including me,” he said, instead.

 ----------

Most of the evening passed with Cas sitting beside Dean in the kitchen, listening to to the chatter of Dean’s chosen family, absorbing their stories and banter. Slowly, he began to feel warmer, closer to the two Winchesters he’d known for years through the love of these people who’d known them so much longer.

Only occasionally, and only ever solo or in perfectly manageable pairs, someone passing from the sitting room into the kitchen for another drink would catch his eye and greet him with an excited, over-enthusiastic “Cas?!” and his heart would jump into his throat again until the pleasantries, the friendly hugs, and the well meaning questions lulled him back into relaxation, gently reminding him that these were his friends. By the grace of God, nobody asked him about next season, or when he’d be back at the rink, and discussion about how his recovered was going never included any difficult follow up questions.

Kevin threw Cas for a bit of a loop by asking him if he’d come by the rink and try to help him figure out what was going wrong with his quad Salchow, because none of Anna’s tips were helping. Last Cas had heard from Anna, Kevin’s quad sal was coming along perfectly, almost good to go, and would be the technical backbone of his programs for the coming season. At his best guess, Kevin was just trying to give Cas an excuse to come visit without getting on the ice, trying to drag him back out of his shell. It was well intentioned, if missing the mark, and though he appreciated it, Cas felt himself tense up.

“I’ll try to come by,” Cas said, jaw tight, and he knew he wouldn’t make it.

Kevin had barely been gone two minutes when Cas, distracted and fading fast, was yanked, mentally, back into the kitchen by Dean’s ever returning, grounding hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, Thousand Yard Stare,” Dean said. “How’re you holding up?”

“I’m fine,” Cas lied. Truthfully, he was feeling more distant, less right in his skin, with every forced conversation, and Kevin had perhaps shoved him right over the edge.

“You wanna go home?” Dean asked.

“No, I’m alright.”

“We made a deal, remember?” Dean said. “You already held up your end of the bargain. You can tap out anytime you want.”

Cas hesitated. “I can just sit here quietly, Dean. You should enjoy your family’s company.”

“Trust me, we’re gonna be here all night,” Dean laughed. “I can take an hour to drive you home.”

“Are you sure?” Cas asked.

“C’mon, you,” Dean said, standing from his seat and swiping his keys off Bobby’s counter.

 ----------

“I’m not going to be back next season,” Cas said, apropos of nothing, as Dean merged onto the freeway.

Dean didn’t answer right away, and he was silent long enough that Cas began to wonder if he’d actually spoken aloud.

“Okay,” Dean said, finally.

“Anna knows,” Cas said, speaking slowly, in starts and pauses. “And Gabriel. But we’ve been keeping it quiet because I don’t think anybody else needs the details, and I don’t want anyone to make a big deal out of it. I guess everyone will figure it out when I don’t register for the Grand Prix series in the fall.”

Dean listened, quiet, and stayed quiet for a long time after Castiel finished speaking, just staring out at the road.

“Not that I don’t care, Cas, but I thought you didn’t want to talk about it,” he eventually said.

“You already know everything else,” Cas sighed. “I was mortified breaking down in front of you earlier, but if I think about it, I don’t want to talk about it because I’ll be jealous of other skaters, but you’re not a skater. I don’t want to disappoint anyone with a stake in my career, but why would you care if I never skate again? Maybe I should talk about it. Maybe it would help. But every time I’ve tried, everybody just makes me feel worse.”

“I don’t think anybody wants to make you feel bad.”

“I know they don’t. They just don’t understand, or they don’t know how to help. I don’t know. It just felt like you knew what I needed to hear, somehow, and I feel like I did better in the last four hours than I have any other time since the accident.”

When Dean again didn’t answer right away, it occurred to Cas that maybe he was oversharing, that maybe Dean didn’t want the burden of Cas’ venting.

“I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t treat you like a therapist,” Cas said, backpedaling. “You barely know me. My troubles aren’t your problem.”

“No, it’s not that,” Dean said. “I’m just… thinking.”

They lapsed back into silence, and Cas gave Dean that time. Instead of talking, Cas turned his head to watch Dean’s face in his peripheral vision, and took him in, studying his features as his mind worked on the problem, the shape of his face lit up by the glow of the streetlights brushing past the car.

“I know what it’s like to lose the thing that you think makes you, you,” Dean said, abruptly.

“You figured me out that well from some mild agoraphobia?” Cas asked.

Dean bit his lip, thinking again. “We all know you aren’t coming back, Cas,” he said, slowly, and gently. “Anna never said, but man, we were all there at Nationals. We all saw what happened. We were floored you were even walking after how badly that fall fucked you up.”

It took Cas several seconds to process this information, somewhat out of shock, and somewhat out of shame that he hadn’t been able to hide as well as he’d thought. He pinched the bridge of his nose, and breathed. Maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise to him, but nonetheless, he’d been so sure he’d been able to keep everyone from the whole truth. Something inside him started to ache.

“Cas?” Dean asked, and when Cas looked back to him, Dean was watching him as best he must have been able to while still keeping his eyes at least mostly safely on the road.

“They all know?” Cas asked.

“Not sure they’d bet their lives on it, but pretty much,” Dean said. “I’m sorry Cas. I didn’t think it was a big secret.”

“Do the fans know?”

“Hard to say, dude. Fans’ll spend enough time making wild guesses that they’ll be right every now and then,” Dean said.

“But at your best guess, what do you think they know?” Cas asked again.

Dean thought about it a minute before answering. “The TV broadcast cut the really gruesome stuff, with the exposed bone,” he said. “I haven’t heard of any clear videos showing up online. Hell, Charlie had no clue, and she’s a pretty invested fangirl by now.”

Cas exhaled, and visibly relaxed into the bench seat.

“So at least it could be worse,” Dean joked, poorly. “Not by much, sure, but still.”

“I feel very exposed tonight,” Cas admitted.

“Sorry,” Dean said. “Want me to level the playing field? I’ve got embarrassing first date stories. I’ll tell you all the chick flicks that’ve made me cry, if you promise not to tell anybody.”

Cas hesitated, not wanting to ask for too much, but the question was there in the back of his mind. “Do you mind if I ask what you lost?” He asked. “You don’t have to tell me, I guess.”

“It was Sam,” Dean said, without hesitation. “Mostly, anyway. And then I just had my dad until he died, and I made some bad choices after that.”

Bobby’s veiled reference, from earlier in the evening, to Dean’s troubles in Sam’s absence, crossed Cas’ mind, but he didn’t mean to dig quite so deep into Dean’s own troubles if Dean wasn’t really, truly eager to share.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said instead.

“Sam came back, though,” Dean said. “I’m lucky like that. Who knows? Maybe something will come up. Maybe you’ll get lucky, too.”

“I doubt it,” Cas sighed.

“Do you think there’s any chance you could ever get it back?” Dean asked. “Year after next, or sometime down the road? Even if not for competition, you could do ice shows, just keep yourself out there and on the ice.”

“If I knock my ankle around too much, I might damage it badly enough that I won’t be able to walk again, let alone skate,” Cas explained. “Strictly no jumping. Doctor’s orders.”

“So no competition,” Dean said. “But no ice shows? Granted, you’d have to step up your other elements.”

“I don't see the point in chasing the sport when we all know it’s over for me,” Cas said. “It’s healthier if I just quit, cold turkey. Let that chapter of my life be over.”

“Yeah, sure, but you gotta replace it with something besides Netflix binges.”

Cas turned and gave Dean a quizzical frown.

“I talk to your brother a lot,” Dean explained. “He’s still bumming of your subscription. Don’t tell him I told you.”

Cas went back to staring out the window.

“You could always get into ice dance,” Dean said, and Cas couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. “No jumping even allowed.”

Cas scoffed. “Theoretically, yes, that would be possible.”

“Come on, I’m being a little bit serious.”

“Find me a coach with the patience to take me on and start from square one in a whole new discipline,” Cas said. “Nobody cares that much, Dean.”

Something, a look like an idea, or maybe a spark of mania, crossed Dean’s face, but he didn’t press the issue, and Cas letting it go, and the car fell into a warm kind of quiet.


	3. Chapter 3

Anna’s brows drew together in concern, her chin resting on one fist as she leaned forward on the desk in her cramped, cluttered office, squinting at her visitor.

“Look, Dean,” she said. “It's not that I don't appreciate what you’re trying to do, here.”

“He could do it though, couldn’t he?” Dean asked.

Anna scoffed. “Theoretically,” she said. She drummed the fingers of her free hand on the desk, thinking about Dean’s proposal. “But honestly, I think you’re vastly underestimating how difficult it would be for him. Ice dance isn’t just pairs without jumps, and even just the transition to skating with a partner would be a massive undertaking. My brother’s only ever skated singles.”

“I know that,” Dean said. “And I know it won’t be easy--”

“And with the injury--” Anna said, trying to cut him off.

“I think you’re underestimating him,” Dean said, interrupting her right back.

Anna sighed. “Cas is far too old to just start a new path like that,” she said. “You know how early these decisions have to be made. You went through it with Sam.”

“If he doesn’t at least try to make the switch, he’ll never skate again,” Dean said, somewhere between insistence and pleading.

“You think I don’t know that?” Anna asked, frustration barely concealed. “You don’t think it bugs the hell out of me? Dean, he got into this sport following me, he got into competition because of me, and sure, you could say that as his coach, I’m responsible for his injury, too. I can’t stop you from doing this, I know that, but I’ve got to make you understand that you’re only going to hurt Castiel more by expecting him to do something he’s just not capable of. You’re going to force him to fail.”

“How do you know he’s not capable, huh?” Dean asked. “You seen him try?”

She sighed heavily before steeling herself, and leaning in to give Dean what for. The delay may just have been the only thing keeping her from losing her temper then and there. “I know how hard he tries to live up to other people’s expectations, and I know he’ll push himself until he gets hurt if the rest of us don’t stop him,” Anna said, sternly, pulling her rank as not only Cas’ coach, but his big sister, too. “You don’t know this about him because you don’t know him, and you don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“I know he’s suffering right now,” Dean said.

Something in Anna softened, almost imperceptibly - just a twitch around the eyes, a release of the tension in her jaw. She sighed, turning away as she leaned back in her chair, and her anger ebbed, replaced with melancholy. Dean watched her carefully as she covered her eyes with one hand and carefully managed her own breathing - a subtle gesture shared among the Novaks, evidently, in times of stress.

“He wants to skate,” Dean said, softly. “He just doesn’t think he can.”

“I can’t let him get hurt again,” Anna said, removing her hand, but not meeting Dean’s eye.

“He’s already hurt,” Dean said.

“I know.”

“Then let’s give him a chance to at least try.”

There was a long silence, as Anna thought it over, conflict evident in her heart. “What do you need?” She finally asked. Not permission, not yet, but not denial, either.

Dean lit up inside, but he was careful not to get ahead of himself. “Contacts, mostly,” he said. “Use of the rink.”

Still not looking at him, Anna slid a thin, leather bound address book out from under a stack of papers. She opened it up on the desk in front of her, flipping through, checking names. With a great sigh, she slapped it shut again, and finally looking up, held it out for Dean to take.

With a grateful smile, Dean took hold of the book, but Anna didn’t let go. She waited until she had Dean’s full attention, and held his gaze, looking him directly in the eye with a stern expression.

“I can’t coach ice dance, Dean, but I need to stay up to date on how he's adjusting,” she said. “He needs to meet with his doctor regularly about it. And you need to find him a potential partner before bringing this to him, because that’s going to be the hardest part, and if you give him that hope and you can’t deliver, you’ll just break him even more.”

“I can do all that,” Dean said.

“None of the contacts you need will be easy to find. You’re going to talk to a lot of people who’ll see him as a lost cause, and a probably people who are going to want to use his name for their own purposes, and even if you would allow that to happen, I won’t.”

“I’ll keep his name out of it until I’m sure,” Dean offered. “Does that put your mind at rest?”

“I can and will bar you both from the ice if he’s pushing himself too hard,” she continued.

“I expect nothing less,” Dean said, with a smile he hoped was understanding.

A flicker of uncertainty crossed Anna’s face, but it passed, and she released her hold on the book.

“I don’t like this.”

“We’re doing the right thing,” Dean said.

Anna huffed out a bittersweet laugh, resting her chin back on her fist. “I really hope so,” she sighed, and let Dean go.

 ----------

Dean struck out with four coaches and three choreographers before he realized Anna was far more right than he’d thought possible.

Nobody worth Castiel Novak’s reputation was going to take on a project as doomed to failure as trying to make an ice dancer out of such a severely broken down singles skater, much less at the bequest of Mr. Nobody Winchester of Lawrence, Kansas, who was refusing to name names.

Sam and Jess’ old coach from Palo Alto had been Dean’s first call, before he’d even cracked Anna’s address book, and as good as the guy had always been to Sam, he’d wasted no time in giving Dean a very firm lecture over the phone on why it was never going to pan out the way he was hoping. Ice dance, the man explained, requires skaters to be aware not only of their own bodies, but those of their partners. Additionally, with the technical elements hardly comparable in terms of sheer physical challenge to those attempted in singles and pairs, scoring focuses much more on presentation. And yes, Dean, he understood that this unnamed friend of his had always had solid presentation scores, but the standards for pure showmanship in ice dance would be so much higher than he was used to, and did Dean really think his friend could make the adjustment? And Dean had to admit to himself that he wasn’t sure he knew Castiel well enough to make that promise.

It really didn’t help, either, that Anna was the only real coach working out of Lawrence. Dean wasn’t ready to ask Cas to move out of town, or out of state, when the whole project seemed like a pipe dream that, seemingly, nobody who’d ever been within a hundred yards of an ISU sanctioned event could possibly believe in. Not to mention that Anna would probably kill him before letting him take Cas out of town, and out of her sphere of influence, where she felt she could still protect him from himself.

As for choreography, nobody would even speak to Dean until Cas had a partner, and finding adult, competitive, and available ice dancers was looking like finding the holy freakin’ grail.

Dean was starting to wonder if he should just start cold calling from Anna’s other contacts to see if anybody had so much as heard of an available woman in ice dance, because he’d already exhausted every lead he’d found by interrogating any poor sap who walked through the doors of the Lawrence Skating Club. Gilda politely declined when Dean asked if she could possibly fill in until his suspiciously anonymous friend found a real partner. She apologized, but assured him she really didn’t have the time, though she hoped he would find someone soon. When he asked Kali, she just raised an eyebrow condescendingly at him, which Dean took as a negative.

He was sitting in his car in the club parking lot, flipping through the leather bound address book, in search of any names or titles that might signify someone who might be even remotely helpful and who he hadn’t already called at least three times, when the passenger door swung open, startling the hell out of him. Not quite sure if he was relieved or irritated, Dean turned and saw Gabriel Novak, diabetes inducing Starbucks cold drink in hand, letting himself right on into the car.

“Jesus Christ, dude,” Dean said. “Think you could have knocked? Given me a wave? Not made me shit my pants thinking I’m being carjacked?”

“Nah, this is more fun,” Gabriel said, shutting the car door behind him. “More to the point, word on the street is that you’re an ice dancer all of a sudden.”

“I’m just trying to help somebody out,” Dean said, resigning himself to Gabriel's presence and tossing the address book into the back seat.

“And would that somebody happen to be my little bro?” Gabriel asked.

Dean sighed, weighing the pros and cons of coming clean only momentarily before deciding that Gabriel had clearly already figured it out all by himself. “Did Anna tell you?” He asked.

“No, I just guessed the most obtuse and naive publicity stunt in figure skating history.” Gabe took an obnoxiously loud sip of his drink. “Yeah, genius. Anna told me. And Kali says you’re looking for a girl for him to skate with.”

“So what, you’re here to tell me Cas oughta just throw in the towel, too?” Dean asked.

“Honestly? I’m here because I saw you sad sacking it in the parking lot and God help me, I felt kinda bad for you. So, in fact, much the opposite, my friend. I’m here to help.”

“Seriously?”

“Dead serious.”

“You think you can find Cas a partner, then?” Dean asked. “Maybe a coach?”

“Anna’s people are a better bet for a coach than mine, and that’s a tall order to begin with, kid. Anna’s right, Cas is damaged goods. But a partner?” Gabriel shrugged. “I can put my feelers out. I’m kind of a semi-professional figure skater hanger arounder, if you hadn’t noticed. I know everybody’s dirt. If somebody’s single out there, I’ll find her.”

“What is your actual job, anyway?” Dean asked.

“I’m a custodian at KU,” Gabriel said, and Dean wasn’t sure what he was expecting him to say, but it certainly wasn’t that. “I’ve also got a wicked trust fund. But, y’know, good to have something to do during the day.”

“No, Gabriel, I don’t know,” Dean said. “Your experiences are not universal.”

“You want me to find you a girl or not?”

Dean sighed. “Yes. Obviously,” he said. “And thank you. I never thought I’d say this, but you’re really saving my ass, here.”

“Don’t get too touchy-feely, Dean-o. I ain’t doing it for you,” Gabe said.

“Do you really think Cas can do this?” Dean asked.

“Honestly, I’ve got no freakin’ idea,” Gabriel said. “But it’s gotta turn out better for him than sulking in his apartment day and night. I worry about the little shit, you know?”

“He’s your brother,” Dean said. “Of course you do.”

“Yeah, you get it. If it were Sam…” Gabe began.

“I’d try anything,” Dean finished for him.

“Exactly,” Gabriel said, and took another sip of his drink.

 ----------

Cas had to dig through the tangle of blankets on his bed to find his phone, but somehow still managed to pick it up on the second ring. Gabriel wasted no time on greetings.

“Heya, Cassie,” he said. “I’m on my way over.”

Cas squinted at the clock on his night stand. It certainly wasn’t so early that he could really begrudge Gabe the rude awakening, but it was a Saturday, and he there was no doubt in his mind that his brother was fully aware he would still be in bed at this hour.

“What?” He asked. “Now?”

“Yeah, now,” Gabe scoffed. “And your bestie is coming along, so get dressed.”

“My bestie?”

“Dean-o.”

“Hold on,” Cas sighed. “I’m barely awake enough for this conversation right now - where are you? Where are we going?”

“Don’t ask questions, bro, just do it.”

“Gabriel, you’re single handedly putting my blood pressure through the roof,” Cas said, fully aware he was whining just a little. “Gabriel?” He asked, when there was no response.

A second later, his phone started beeping at him and he realized Gabriel had hung up.

Why the hell did his brother have to be the way he was? Cas groaned and flopped back down on the mattress.

Castiel unlocked his phone, scrolled through his contacts, and double tapped on Dean’s name. He and Dean had exchanged numbers after the engagement party, and though Cas hadn’t exactly gone into that night looking to make a new friend, he found he hadn’t minded Dean’s regular texts checking in in the intervening few weeks, or the occasional impromptu invitation to get coffee or lunch - as far away from the rink as possible. It made him feel a little less alone, and like time had some kind of meaning, like he wasn’t just waiting out the days. It gave him something to look forward to. Dean was so easy to talk to that it didn’t feel like more energy than it was worth to socialize with him.

Dean’s phone rang two, three, four times, and then went to voicemail. Failing that, Cas tried calling Gabriel back, but didn’t fare any better than he had with Dean.

He wondered if he should just relent and get dressed. Both Gabe and Dean had seen his scars already, sure, but he supposed it would be less of a hassle to give in now, instead of starting a fight when they arrived that he already knew he would lose.

Cas was pretty sure he looked borderline homeless in jeans he’d sworn he had filled out back when he still worked out, and a shirt with, he noticed only after he'd put it on, a little ketchup stain on the front, which he’d fished out of the laundry basket for lack of anything clean to put on. Alas, when he looked in the mirror, he decided that ‘good enough’ was good enough, and that he’d rather be comfortable and avoid putting in any more than the bare minimum of effort to maintain the fantasy that he had even one iota of his shit together.

“I’m at least not going out with you until you tell me where we’re going,” Cas said, when he opened the door to a grinning Gabriel and a slightly apologetic looking Dean.

“Lunch, obviously,” Gabe said, like it was the stupidest question he’d ever heard, and to Cas’ seemingly infinite frustration with his brother, Gabriel reached out and scratched lightly at the crusted red spot on his front.

Cas slapped Gabe’s hand away. “Would you stop?” He asked.

“Just looking out for you, bro,” Gabriel said.

“Are you?” Cas asked, incredulously.

“Could you both put your dicks away?” Dean said. “I’m hungry. Come on.”

Cas sighed, and, for Dean’s sake, relented. He turned towards the kitchen to collect his keys and wallet from the bowl on the countertop. “Give me a minute,” he said.

The front door shut as the other men came fully into the living room, and behind him, Cas heard Gabriel throw himself onto the sofa with an exaggerated ‘oof’ sound, while Dean followed him into the kitchen.

“Sorry about the ambush,” Dean said. “Gabriel is convinced that you’d find a way out of going if you’d had any notice.”

“He’s overreacting just a little,” Cas said. “You should count yourself very lucky that Sam is any kind of a reasonable human being.”

Cas shoved the essentials into the pockets of his jeans, and in his peripheral vision, Dean ambled around the kitchen, peeking into his sink and his cupboards.

“Wow,” he said. “You’ve cleaned up a bit.”

“Yes.”

Dean opened up the refrigerator, and with an overacted gasp, turned back to Cas. “Are these groceries? Real groceries? In your fridge?” He asked.

“Shut up,” Cas said, suppressing a smile at the teasing.

“Look at you, Cas, you’re the heavyweight champ of taking care of yourself this week!”

“Don’t patronize me, Dean,” Cas said, and he was fairly sure Dean could see right through his stubborn play at being unamused.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Dean said with a smirk.

\----------

Gabriel called shotgun as they got to Dean’s car, as if they were back in middle school, and Cas didn’t begrudge him the small pleasure, though Dean was clearly less than overjoyed. The drive to the diner was filled with aimless chatter, and when the conversation lagged, there was always the drone of one of Dean’s old cassette tapes on the car stereo to fill the gaps. The first true lull of quiet between them wasn’t until all three were packed into a diner booth with oversized menus in front of them, Cas beside Dean, across from Gabriel. Cas was deciding between two varieties of needlessly complicated, but nonetheless delicious looking, burgers, when Gabriel conspicuously cleared his throat.

“So, you should know that Dean and I have been working on a little project, as it so happens,” he said.

“Oh?” Cas asked.

“Mm-hm,” Gabriel replied, simply, before falling silent. When Cas looked up to ask him to elaborate, he found Gabe looking expectantly at Dean, hiding, oblivious, behind his menu. Dean didn’t move for another several long moments before glancing up, and finally realizing that they were all waiting on him.

Dean faltered half a second, clearly nervous, but composed himself and settled down to business. He put down his menu, turned in his seat to face Cas, one elbow on the table, and smiled at him in a way he must have hoped was reassuring. The sudden formality put Cas on the back foot, uncertain just what this was about.

“So, uh,” he began, but hesitated. He glanced at Gabriel, a silent plea for backup, but Gabe just kept watching politely, waiting for Dean to do all the heavy lifting. Seeming to realize he was on his own, Dean sighed, and continued. “This is something I’d been thinking about since we had that talk after Sam and Jess’ party, but I didn’t want you to worry about it until I was sure, and now Gabriel’s found somebody, so…”

Dean trailed off, but Cas couldn’t help but notice a subtle shift in his attitude, from pure nerves to anxious excitement.

“Somebody for what?” He asked.

“A partner for you,” Gabriel answered, grin growing on his face.

“What?” Cas asked, still perplexed. It wouldn't have been the first time Gabriel had tried to set him up, but to involve Dean...

“Remember, we were talking about how you could go back into skating if you switched to ice dance?” Dean asked.

All in a moment, the realization Dean was trying to lead him to washed over him. Not a partner - a _partner._  He felt himself stop breathing. He went a little numb. He looked between Dean and Gabriel, for any indication that this was a joke, that he was misunderstanding something, but neither man gave it to him. They were serious, he realized. And hopeful. And they meant…

They were saying he could skate again.

“Are you serious?” Cas asked, words tumbling from his mouth before he even realized he was speaking aloud.

“Yeah, Cas,” Dean said. His smile widened, crinkling the corners of his eyes. “We’re getting you back out on the ice.”

Castiel had a rush of excitement, and then a spark of fear, and was suddenly awash with feelings he couldn’t even identify, good or bad, but he knew they were huge, living things that filled him up entirely. A pressure he couldn’t quite describe filling his chest and crushing his lungs. He hurt. Maybe it wasn’t a bad kind of hurt. His face felt hot, and he couldn’t find it in him to speak. His eyes stung. It all felt too much, suddenly, too vulnerable for here and now, and as his only available defense, he covered his face with his hands and forced himself to breath steadily through the weakness.

Cas could hear that Gabe was talking, telling him all about the girl he’d found, the ways in which she was going to make a great ice dance partner, but his mind was racing so fast as to drown out most of the words, and he couldn’t think, but he also couldn't stop thinking, and before he even realized what was happening, Cas was crying, quietly, into his hands.

Some time after that, Gabriel went quiet. Cas felt a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, Cas?” Dean said, softly. “Hey, buddy, it’s okay.”

“Excuse me,” Cas choked out abruptly, and he forced himself up, out of the booth, and fled the diner, out into the parking lot.

Dean’s Impala was locked when Cas tried the door, just looking for a bit of privacy, and so, without other options, he simply sat himself down on the asphalt, leaning back against one of the tires, and tried not to think about how dirty his clothes would be later.

One one hand: Christ, he was terrified. The possibility of failure was so intimidating, but on the other hand, his heart just leapt at the thought of--

No.

He shut the thought down automatically, a hard instinct. He hadn’t let a future with skating in it cross his mind since January, when Dr. Barnes had explained as gently as she could that he’d lost that dream when he botched the landing on that triple axel.

His mind started spiralling, swinging wildly between extremes of hope and terror, and the tears just kept coming.

“Cas?” Said a voice.

Dean. Cas knew he ought to have more shame about being seen crying like this, but breakdowns in front of Dean Winchester were pretty par for the course with their friendship so far.

“I’m sorry,” Cas choked out. “It’s a lot.”

In Cas’ peripheral vision, he saw Dean crouch down and sit next to him against the car. He tried not to think about how dirty _Dean’s_ clothes would be later, either.

“I thought this was what you wanted,” Dean said, quietly, and Cas had never seen him so unsure.

“It is, Dean,” Cas said. “It’s everything to me. Thank you.”

“You don’t seem very happy.”

“I am, I think,” Cas sighed. “I just…” He trailed off.

“Just what?” Dean asked.

“I’m not sure if I’m excited or scared, to be perfectly honest.”

“I really wouldn’t be surprised if it was a little bit of both,” Dean said earnestly.

Cas sobbed out a breathless laugh. “I think you’re probably right.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, on the ground, in the parking lot, and Dean kept Cas company as he got control over his breathing and, finally, dried his eyes.

“Her name is Meg,” Dean said, when it looked like Cas was ready to hear it. “She’s got business to wrap up in Colorado, so it’ll be a few weeks before she’s able to come to Lawrence. It’ll give you some time to get back on the ice.”

“She’s willing to move for this?” Cas asked. “That’s a big commitment. She’s risking a lot on me.”

“She needs somebody to skate with, you need somebody to skate with,” Dean said. “It’s hard finding new partners at your age. She’s as lucky as you are that this came up.”

“I don’t know if I can do this,” Cas admitted.

“We’ll start you off slow, Cas. Anna said we can use the rink in off hours. You don’t have to talk to anybody about it until you’re ready.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Cas said. “I mean, yes, but honestly, I haven’t so much as driven past an ice rink since the accident. Or discussed skating with my physiotherapist. I don’t know if I can physically skate anymore. And if I roll over on that ankle again--”

“I know,” Dean said. He placed a soothing hand on Cas’ knee, quietly breaking the spiral of anxiety.

“I can’t tell you how badly I want this, Dean,” Castiel said, almost at a whisper. “There’s just so many ways this could go wrong. I can’t guarantee it’ll have been worth it - not just for me, but for you, and anyone else involved.”

“Listen, I can’t promise you it’ll work out perfectly. But if this is what you really want, you’ve gotta at least try,” Dean said. “We’ll stay in touch with your doctor, start you off slow, and if you can’t do it, hell, at least we tried, right? Isn’t that better than wondering all our lives?”

Castiel nodded, but was distracted. “You say ‘we’,” he said, implying a question in his tone.

Dean stumbled over his next words for a second before rushing to qualify his previous ones. “If you don’t want me to come along, obviously I don’t have to,” he said. “I know I’m no coach, I just thought I could help you out so you didn’t have to be alone.”

“No, of course I’d like you to come,” Cas said. “But I know you've got a real job, too. You’ve given me so much of your time already by bringing it this far, Dean.”

“C’mon,” Dean said, breaking into a friendly smile. “You really think I’d give up the chance to skate with a champion? Nah. Buddy, for you? I’ll make the time.”

“I’m not--” Cas began, but Dean cut him off.

“I know,” he said, and patted Cas’ leg where his hand was resting. “I wanna skate with you anyway.”

Some of the heavy weight eased off Cas’ shoulders, heart a little lighter, and he found himself returning Dean’s smile with a faint one of his own. “I’m looking forward to finally seeing you skate,” he said.

“Now, come on,” Dean said, standing up and brushing road grit off his jeans. “This is a happy occasion. We must have celebration pie.”

Dean offered a hand to help Cas up, and together, unburdened, they walked back to the diner.


	4. Chapter 4

Three days later, Dean got off work at six in the evening, wove through rush hour traffic to pick Cas up at his apartment, and shortly thereafter had to gently talk him through a panic attack in the skating rink parking lot.

“I’m not ready for this,” Cas groaned into his hands, curled forward with his forehead pressed against the dashboard of Dean’s car.

“Cas, you’re never gonna be ready,” Dean said. “Some things you just gotta do, even if you’re scared.”

“I’m _so_ scared, though.”

“Okay, how about this? Today we do one lap around the rink, and then we go home,” Dean said. “Get the scary part out of the way right now, and then we can leave. I’ll buy you take out, and I’ll binge watch whatever boring shit is in your Netflix queue with you. Sound like a plan?”

Cas just groaned again, knowing he needed to go inside, and having no valid excuses, but wanting so badly not to have to face his insecurity. Dean sighed.

“Okay, you know what?” Dean said, and he abruptly got out of the car. The driver’s side door slammed shut, and Cas heard the trunk open and close before the passenger side door swing open and there was Dean, waiting for him, with both their skate bags slung over one shoulder. “I’m going inside, and I’m gonna skate until you come inside and skate with me. Or you can stay in the car all night.”

“Dean, please,” Cas whined.

“Hey, I can’t be soft on you forever,” Dean said, but there was no bite to the words. “Time for tough, but fair.”

And with that, Dean was gone, striding off across the lot towards the building.

Cas sighed, heavily, as he watched Dean go. He was held by a moment of indecision - the briefest thought that he might, in fact, prefer to sit alone in Dean’s car all night than walk into a building he’d practically lived in just one year before - but felt a little more uncertainty, more fear, watching Dean walk away than he had with Dean beside him. Desperate not to be alone, or at least not to have to go into the rink alone, Cas got out of the car, slammed the door behind him, and jogged after Dean.

His fingers felt stiff as he laced up his skates, and he hyperfocused himself on doing them perfectly, putting the correct tension on the laces, gently bending his ankle in the boot to test out the fit. It gave him a distraction from the twisting feelings that manifested in his stomach from being in the club once again.

But there was nobody there. No other skaters, no Anna, not even a custodian. Just Dean and Cas, just as Dean had promised him.

Dean was already out on the ice when Cas finally left the changing room and approached the barrier. Dean had swapped his worn jeans for sweatpants that bunched up at the top of his skate boot, ditched his flannel at the gate, and was casually gliding around the rink in his t-shirt, alternating skating backwards and forwards, looking as at ease on the ice as any competitor Cas had ever met.

Catching sight of Cas, Dean crossed the rink and let himself run into the boards, right by the gate, beaming.

“Hey, you made it this far,” he said.

“In all the time Sam and Jess have trained here, I’ve never seen you skate,” Cas said.

“Yeah, well, who wants to see me skate when they’ve got hot shots like you and Kevin flying around?” Dean laughed.

“Can you do elements?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, some,” Dean said.

“Jumps?”

“A little.”

“Can I see?”

Dean laughed. “Sure, but you gotta watch from the ice. I’m not letting you flatter me into letting you out of skating today.”

He moved in front of the gate and held out an open hand, silently inviting Cas to join him on the ice.

“I don’t need help,” Cas said, suddenly defensive.

“I know you don’t need it,” Dean said. “But it’s here if you want it.”

Cas looked around the rink, took it all in, and, with a deep breath, he found his resolve. He leaned on the barrier to take off his skate guards, and, against the advice of that part of him still to proud to ask for help, took Dean’s hand as he took a first, nervous step through the gate.

His left blade wanted to slide along the ice, as it always had, and he held it in check as he brought his right foot over to join it, as he always had, and then Castiel was standing on the ice for what felt like the first time in a new life, and he wasn’t afraid. All of the anxiety, all of the anticipation, the running list of things that could go wrong and reasons to quit now, they all melted away. Standing there, with Dean holding his hand, he felt peace, instead.

“Solid?” Dean asked, smiling.

“Yes,” Cas replied.

“C’mon, let’s go for a lap,” Dean said, and started skating backwards, gently tugging Cas along by the hand like he was a child at his first lesson. “You’ve got the hardest part done already.”

Cas skated forwards, a few slow glides. It felt shaky, unsteady, but only for nerves, and still as familiar as it had ever been. He began by staring at his feet, as if he’d forgotten how to move them by feeling alone, but the tension in his body, and the fear of trusting his faded muscle memory, eased away as Dean guided him along the edges of the rink. He built up confidence with each stride, speeding up, until he and Dean were circling the rink together fast enough to hear the rush of their air past their ears, until Cas was outpacing Dean, and his hand slid out of Dean’s grasp as he took off like a shot along the boards.

Cas pushed himself, skating around the rink as fast as he could manage, chasing the feeling in his gut of speed and freedom that he’d been so afraid of never getting the chance to reclaim for his own. He turned himself around, stumbled a little, but didn’t fall, and took another two laps backwards.

Lap after lap after lap, feeling giddy, Cas flew again.

Eventually, he let himself slow, stopped pushing and just let his momentum swing him around the rink in lazier and lazier spiralling ovals, first on his left blade, then, unsteadily, his right, and then back again.

“Was that so bad?” Dean asked, and Cas glanced over to see him watching, amused, and somewhat fondly, from the center of the ice, out of the way of Cas’ desperate, joyful laps.

Aware, then, of the audience, Cas instantly felt ridiculous for having ever been so afraid. He was more than glad, however, to have been proven wrong. He felt his face heat up at the embarrassment of having lost his composure like that, and occupied himself with brushing his newly wind rustled hair back into order.

“Well?” Dean asked again, skating over.

“No,” Cas answered, only a little shyly.

“What’s that?” Dean asked, teasing, leaning in as if he hadn’t heard Cas the first time.

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“Told you.” Dean was still beaming. Cas realized, belatedly, that he was, too.

Dean and Cas spent the rest of the evening chasing each other around the rink. Technique was forgotten, along with petty pride, in favour of drawing out, for as long as possible, the first genuine moments of happiness Cas had felt since winning that last silver medal. He felt no aches, no pains, and no trepidation - just the pull of a possible future down the path that Dean had led him back to.

Dean, the improbably selfless man who had faded into the background of his life for all these years. The man Cas really didn’t have words to express his gratitude to, who had given him back the only thing he’d ever really had to lose.

“Thank you,” Cas said, when they were sitting in Dean’s car, afterwards, enjoying gyros from a food truck Dean had sworn by.

“For what?” Dean asked, with his mouth full.

“All of it,” Cas said. “I know I said it the other day, but it bears repeating. I could never have asked you to stay with me through this, but it made all the difference tonight. You really went the extra mile. I don’t think I’ve really earned that from you, and you’re very kind to do it.”

“Geez, dude, you’re gonna make me blush,” Dean scoffed. “I’m just doing what I’d’ve done for any friend.”

“We weren’t really friends before this,” Cas said.

“You were Sammy’s friend,” Dean said. “That’s close enough for me.”

“Most people wouldn’t do this even for a friend - sacrifice their free time, put in all this emotional labour.”

“Most people don’t have friends like you, Cas,” Dean said. “The world needs Castiel Novak back a hell of a lot more than it needs me to put in a few more hours overtime at the garage.”

“You’re exaggerating,” Cas said. Need, he felt, was far too strong a word.

“Would you take the damn compliment?” Dean took a sip of his soda. “Or are we gonna get into our daddy issues now? Insecurity is one thing, but don’t you think for a second that people don’t want to see you back out there.”

“I know people _want_ me back," Cas said. "I just have enough perspective to know it’s not all that important."

“Yeah, well, life is shit and then you die. Nothing is really all that important in the grand scheme of things,” Dean said. “At least this - helping you - is something somebody somewhere is gonna care about for more than five minutes. That makes it more important than anything else I’ve got going on right now.”

“So you’re going to stay with me, then?” Cas asked. “Long term? Or at least for a little while, still?”

“Obviously,” Dean joked, with a cocky smile. “I haven’t had a chance to show you my promised, magnificent single flip, yet.”

\----------

The second day of practice was far more focused than the first had been. Cas focused on his form, and went over sections of old step sequences while Dean sat on top of the barrier and kept him company. The third day was more of the same. Dean promised that if they made it to the rink every day that week, he’d show Cas one of his jumps, and Cas managed not to be too offended that he was being bartered with like a child promised candy for finishing his homework.

On the fourth day, Cas woke up with the ghost of an ache in his knee, and slid a pressure sleeve under his sweatpants. He did not let Dean see, nor did he share that the pain had ever been there, but given that the pain did not return during practice, Cas really wasn’t concerned.

The fifth day saw the return of spins to Cas’ roster. Dean was easily goaded into showing Cas his own unpolished camel spin, and Cas was even more easily goaded into making it into a competition that he somehow lost. He argued that he was out of practice, but Dean still amused himself incessantly with claiming he’d beaten a certified US champion.

On the sixth day, Cas lost his balance going into a sit spin and went down.

“You okay?” Dean asked, skating over to where Cas had fallen. “How’s the ankle?”

“I’ll be fine. I bumped it, but the worst of the pain’s only skin deep,” Cas said. He was sitting on his ass on the ice where he’d landed, gently feeling out the joint. “Yeah, only a little pain. I’m not worried, but maybe that’s enough for today?”

“Yeah, man, of course,” Dean said, and offered Cas a hand up.

Back on his feet, Cas skated slowly back towards the gate, gentle on his bad leg.

“How’ve the joints been in general?” Dean asked.

“A little achy,” Cas confessed. “But this is the most workout they’ve have in six months. A little achy isn’t too bad.”

“Have you seen your doctor yet?” Dean asked.

“I wasn’t able to get an appointment this week,” Cas said. “I know my own limits, Dean. Don’t worry.”

“I’m just saying, don’t ignore your body,” Dean said. “We can take a day off tomorrow. Honest.”

“But I wanted to see your single flip,” Cas complained.

“You fell on your bad ankle,” Dean said. “I’ll give you this one as a freebie.”

Satisfied, Cas lifted himself up to sit on the barrier, facing in, and started unlacing his right skate.

Dean started circling the rink backwards, picking up speed. “You ready?” He asked, voice raised to be heard across the rink, above the sound of his blades on the ice. “I’m only doing this once, so you’d better be watching.”

Cas dropped the discarded skate on the far side of the barrier and massaged his calf absently while watching Dean. “I’m ready,” he said.

One, two more passes, and Dean took off from his left foot, making respectable height, and turning just the once, before coming down on his right, left leg extended beautifully behind him for several seconds, before he gave up the form and gracelessly skated back to Cas.

“Eh?” Dean gestured to himself, grinning, seeking praise.

“That was a marvelous flip,” Cas said. “I couldn’t have done it better myself.”

“Oh, screw you, Cas,” Dean laughed. He took a second looking at the way Cas was rubbing at his leg, nodded to it. “That hurt?” He asked.

“Stop fussing. I’m fine.”

“C’mon,” Dean said, and put his hand on Cas’ calf, calloused skin warm in the chilly air of the rink. He paused a moment, giving Cas a chance to pull away, Cas supposed, but he let that opportunity pass him by, allowing Dean to tug up the leg of his pants and put more strength into rubbing down the sore muscle than Cas had been able to by himself, with the awkward angle.

Cas’ stomach turned over, and he told himself it must only be his insecurity over the scars, where Dean was pressing strong fingers into his wrecked skin.

\----------

A funny quirk of long term depression is that sometimes, after a months long period of total emotional numbness, it can sometimes be hard for one to understand the nuances of their own emotions. For example, a sudden onset of good moods and dopamine can confuse one into thinking they’re in love with someone, simply because that person happened to be present during a rare moment of joy.

Cas had experienced this before. The six months after the accident were the deepest his depression had ever become, yes, but in all honesty, this wasn’t his first rodeo. Thanks to a combination of loneliness, a bad childhood, and a bit of less than ideal brain chemistry, he’d had a lot of experience with what Michael had always simply called his “moods”.

This insidious dopamine confusion had led him into a short lived relationship with a French skater, who he would come to realize he couldn’t stand exactly six days into their relationship, only four days after they’d made the shift from ‘celebratory post-World Championships hookup’ to ‘long distance text message romance’.

He would not be falling for this trick of the light again, thank you very much, and certainly not with a (presumed heterosexual) man who deserved neither Castiel’s unwanted advances, nor, in the unlikely event that he’d be open to them, the heartbreak of Cas moving on when his mood eventually, and inevitably, stabilized.

But Cas worried that his irrational gay heart wasn’t going to be able to hold out in the face of the following Tuesday’s first forays into partnered skating.

Meg would not arrive in Lawrence for another two weeks, and if they wanted to make it to competition in the coming season, they were going to have to move quickly to register for and be ready to compete at regionals and fight for a chance to skate at US Nationals. Truthfully, the idea of skipping the season and waiting until next year, when he’d be sure he was ready, didn’t bother Cas all that much, but Dean and Gabriel had already invested so much in him. Meg had been waiting around, herself, for more than a year already to find a partner, and he doubted she’d be happy to lose another year of the short window in which skaters are in the right physical condition to be contenders, albeit that ice dancers tended to skew older than singles skaters.

With all the women under Anna’s tutelage busy crafting their own programs for the upcoming season, the supposedly simple task of skating next to Cas so he could build that spacial awareness he’d never needed in singles fell solely onto Dean’s shoulders. Not that Dean would ever complain.

But if Cas’ hormones were going to go off on him like he was sixteen again, excessively closeness and hand holding sure as shit weren’t going to help the situation, no matter how focused he was on the task at hand, and the compulsory step patterns the ISU had put out for the season.

The steps of the rhumba were actually fairly simple. It was just a pattern of edges and turns to memorize - nothing fancy, and nothing new to Cas. He could dance it without a single misstep on his own, without a partner to balance him. In fact, it was the partner that was the problem.

Dean and Cas just could not, for the life of them, maintain an even distance between them. Even with arms braced, straight elbows, and hands on each other’s shoulders, their feet would wander in and out, or they would simply struggle not to push each other off course. With any of the expecting arm positions Cas would need to adopt for competition, all bets were off.

Cas kept trying to straighten his arms, trying and failing to put enough distance between them to avoid kicking Dean’s shins during steps, and being kicking in return, which put Dean off balance. Dean, on the other hand, kept reflexively pulling Cas towards him for balance, until their hips collided painfully and they’d have to hurriedly separate to avoid going down together in a pile of limbs. It didn’t help, either, that Dean had three inches and a fair amount of weight on Cas, and instead of reaching deftly around the waist of the petite woman he’d be skating with in a few weeks, he had to bend his elbow awkwardly around and stretch to reach across Dean’s wider frame.

For about the sixth time that day, Dean’s foot failed to clear the tight space between his opposite skate and Cas’, sending them both wildly off balance. Cas slammed his free leg down in front of him in time to stay upright, and, still gliding, clutched at Dean, who had not been so lucky, holding him half up and dragging him along the ice as he went down.

“Are you alright?” Cas asked, letting Dean slide out of his grip and lie flat, belly up, on the ice surface.

“This is stupid,” Dean said.

“It’s necessary,” Cas said.

“It can be both.”

Cas left Dean, and skated over the ancient stereo to stop the music, still blaring over the buzzy speakers.

“We can’t keep going at it like this,” Cas said, ejecting the CD. “We’re not ready to skate at this tempo. We need to slow down to get control over the steps first.”

“It’s a _rhumba_ ,” Dean said, unmoving. “You ever hear of a nice, chill, down tempo rhumba?”

“Who cares what we practice to?” Cas asked. “As long as we have a rhythm to work with, we can build up to the necessary tempo.”

Dean was quiet a minute, thinking. “What’ve you got in mind?” He asked.

“I don’t know,” Cas said. “You’re much pickier than I am, musically.”

“Yeah, you folk loving hippie,” Dean grumbled, sitting up. “That thing play tapes?”

“It would appear so.”

Without another word, Dean got to his feet, stepped out of the rink, and changed from skates to boots by the barrier before walking out, loose boot laces trailing. He returned a few minutes later with a shoe box, which he set on the barrier and sifted through while he toed off his boots.

“So, down tempo,” Dean said, largely to himself. Peeking over the edge of the box from the opposite side, Cas could see a haphazard jumble of cassette tapes, some in their cases, others not, some with faded labels, some clearly homemade. “You’ve got your Freebird, obviously, your Dust in the Wind, Stairway to Heaven… no, that’s not right. We need something consistent.”

Finally, Dean plucked out a black tape, labelled with ‘sexy mix’ written in smudged sharpie on a piece of painter’s tape. He handed it to Cas.

“I think it’s either track two or three on side B,” he said.

“Which side is side B?” Cas asked.

“If it starts with Night Moves, it’s side A,” Dean said. “Side B starts with I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing.”

“Did girls ever actually give it up for Aerosmith?” Cas asked, skating to the stereo to load the tape.

“It was high school, and I was a bad boy with a great car,” Dean said. “They’d have given it up if I’d tried to set the mood with Weird Al.”

Cas snorted at the joke, but chose not to think too hard about it, or the image of Dean getting laid in the back seat of his Impala, though each for entirely different reasons.

Instead, he checked that yes, the first track was indeed I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing, and then he fast forwarded through it. The next track was a slow, steady guitar piece, and he looked to Dean to confirm. Dean was tapping his thumb against the edge of the tape box, nodding his head a little to the music. Keith Richards started crooning out the lyrics.

“You like it?” Dean asked.

“It’s worth a shot,” Cas said.

Cas listened to a little more of the song while Dean got his skates back on. It was to his taste, far more acoustic than most of Dean’s tapes he’d heard in the car over the car over the last several weeks. The melody was simple, and lyrics spoke to an enduring love in a bittersweet world, of devotion, and of hope.

Dean took to the ice again, and Cas went ahead and rewound the tape to the outro of I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing, giving them time to get into position, facing the same direction, with Cas’ right hand on Dean’s waist, left holding Dean’s outstretched left, waiting for the song to begin.

Moving more slowly than before, they didn’t pick up the same speed in the first few steps that they had when practicing to the recommended music, and instead glid more leisurely. The difference was apparent instantly - without rushing through steps, they had more control over their feet, their edges, though without the momentum, those edges weren't as deep as they’d be expected to work up to. With Deans softly counting the beat under his breath right next to Cas’ ear, he had no trouble staying on tempo.

The riskier steps later in the pattern, the ones where their feet had minimal clearance to pass between their ankles, the once that had knocked them on their asses all week, were not instantly flawless at a slower pace. They were better, though. They still had to keep their eyes down, but the minor collisions of feet and legs didn’t trip them up for more than a half beat.

_Wild, wild horses, couldn’t drag me away…_

Cas felt the boots of their skates collide, and Dean squeezed his hand in a brief panic as he wobbled on the blade, but stayed upright, gave a self-conscious little chuckle, and kept skating.

Before he knew it, Cas was actually kind of enjoying himself. The steps came easier, and he relaxed his arms, and felt the music flow through him, and then it was just a little kick, a sharp turn that Cas mostly swung Dean around, and the compulsory steps were over. Cas let go, and Dean slid on without him a few yards before looping back around, hands on his hips and a smile on his face.

“Wow!” Dean exclaimed.

“I mean, it’s wasn’t _good_ ,” Cas started.

“But it was complete,” Dean said.

Cas huffed out a laugh. “Yeah.”

“Now, how many times have we gotta do that before it’s good?” Dean asked.

Before Cas could think of an answer, the song over the speakers ended, and Bob Dylan started singing an old folk tune. Cas skated over to the stereo.

“I supposed there’s only one way to find out,” he said, and hit rewind.


	5. Chapter 5

Over the next two days, the steps improved, and cleaned up enough that Cas and Dean were able to work their way up from Wild Horses, at about 75 BPM, to AC/DC’s Back in Black, at about 90. They still had a ways to go - a rhumba beat averaging about 105 BPM - but it was progress. Meg’s official travel plans were finally etched in stone, a confirmed arrival date and address in Lawrence. Cas’ ankle was aching a little more than before, but his doctor had given him the okay to keep skating, and he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. Cas had to admit that things were proceeding about as smoothly as he could have hoped.

Which is probably why he should have expected some kind of oncoming speed bump, if for no other reason than that life was rarely so easy for so long.

He and Dean had made it through a near flawless run of the compulsory steps, only to look up from their work and see that they were no longer alone in the rink. Anna, the sounds of her entrance apparently having been hidden by the loud music, was leaning on the barrier, watching them skate.

“Hey,” Dean said in greeting, gliding over to stop the tape.

“You two wanna know who’s been calling me?” Anna asked, voice tight with stress, and crap, okay, this was clearly not a purely social call. Anna was pissed.

“Who?” Cas asked, blood running cold in an instant.

“Becky Rosen,” Anna said.

“Who’s Becky Rosen?” Dean asked.

“She’s with American Figure Skating magazine,” Anna explained.

“But she’s also liable to spread hearsay online,” Cas continued. “And I take it that if you’re upset, she’s doing more of the latter than the former?” He asked Anna.

“She says she hasn’t heard anything about your return to singles, but she’s heard a lot about you going into pairs,” Anna said. “You know where she might have heard that?”

“No,” Cas said. “Did you correct her?”

“And make this ice dance thing public knowledge? No.”

Both Novaks, first Anna, and then Castiel, following her eyeline, turned to Dean, questioning. He adopted a deer-in-the-headlights panic, gaze flickering between them as he jumped to defend himself.

“I’m keeping it quiet until Cas is ready,” Dean said. “That’s the deal we made, and I’m sticking to it. I told Sam, but I know he and Jess aren’t spreading it around.”

“How’d you find that girl of yours, then?” Anna asked. “How many people knew you were asking for Cas?”

“I don’t know,” Dean confessed. “Gabriel found her.”

Cas saw a look of exhausted realization cross Anna’s face, and, following her train of thought, he felt the first pangs of a stress migraine coming on.

“Do you think he’s that stupid?” He asked. He had a feeling he already knew the answer, and Anna didn’t need to voice any. They both knew full well that yes, Gabriel absolutely was.

They loved their brother, Cas thought, a frequent reminder to himself. But, some days more so than others, they did not enjoy him.

Fifteen minutes later, the three of them were crowded around the desk in Anna’s cluttered storage room of an office, with Gabriel haplessly defending himself over speaker phone.

“Listen,” Gabriel said, placatingly. “It was going to come out sooner or later.”

“Nobody gave you permission to make that decision, Gabriel,” Cas setting, getting riled up in spite of himself.

“Did you tell Rosen?” Anna asked. “Or anybody else in the press?”

“No! I may be stupid, but I’m not that stupid.”

“Who exactly did you tell?” Anna asked.

“It came up with a few of the other skaters, is all,” Gabriel said, with an infuriatingly casual tone, as if, as usual, he was refusing to take the situation seriously.

“Who, Gabriel?” Anna repeated.

“I don’t know… Rippon, Wagner. Maybe one of the Shibutanis? Chen, the _other_ Chen…”

“So, everybody Kali did ice shows with this year?” Cas asked, slumping back in the hard chair. “Every single person?”

“Look, bro,” Gabriel said, finally a little desperate, a little apologetic. “I screwed up, okay? I’m sorry. But I still don’t think it’s as big of a deal as you’re making it out to be.”

“But it _is_ a big deal,” Cas said. “I needed to make sure I was capable of this before making a declaration about it. This is about my privacy, and you took that away from me. What happens now if I fail? If my leg gets worse?”

Cas was only barely restraining himself from shouting. He felt a steadying hand on his shoulder, Dean bringing him back from the edge of his temper, but letting him go on talking.

“Now everyone, and I mean everyone, is going to know that I tried, and that I failed, Gabriel,” Cas continued, after a deep breath. “And I know to you that doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it matters to me.”

Gabriel was silent for a long time, and when he finally spoke again, it was softer, stripped of his usual bravado. “I’m sorry, Cas,” he said. “I didn’t realize you cared about… all that. I’m sorry I blabbed, but I can’t exactly take it back now, you hear me?”

“Yes, but you know that I’m the one who has to deal with it, now,” Cas said.

“So we’ll deal with it,” Anna said, and Cas brought his head up to look across the table at her. “The way I see it, I can call Rosen and tell her there’s nothing to the rumors, and we can all quit while we’re ahead. This never happened. It’s just one of those weird broken telephone whispers that nobody can track down an origin for.”

“Anna, c’mon,” Dean said. “We’ve gone too far to stop now. Why can’t we just deny it and keep working until Cas is ready?”

“Because somebody will notice that Meg’s here,” Cas said, solemnly. “We can say nothing’s going on, but it’ll just be an open secret.”

“Or,” Anna began again, sternly, getting back to her point. “We can go ahead and be honest about it. Have it come out as our story in the magazine, not a load of half truths on Twitter.”

“If I can’t make the transition--” Cas began, but Anna cut him off.

“We’ll do everything we possibly can to make sure you can.”

“I’ve still got no coach, no choreographer,” Cas said.

“We’ll find you a real coach,” Anna said. “Or I’ll do it. Hell, Cas, I don’t know a thing about ice dance, but I can get your paperwork together, tell you where you look like you’re going wrong.”

“I thought you were just tolerating this mess,” Dean said, confused. “What’re you pushing it along for?”

“I’m doing my best with the situation in front of me, Dean,” Anna said. It was final, and no longer up for debate. “I’ll call in a favour for choreography. I’ve got a friend in Toronto who owes me one. I know she’s good.”

“Thank you, Anna,” Cas said softly.

Anna sighed, leaning all the way back in her chair. “The three of you are going to be the death of me, but fuck it, right?” She said. “You’re still my brothers. Or, y’know." She waved a hand in Dean's direction. "Brother adjacent.”

“Aw,” Gabe said with a little snicker in his voice. “Dean, you’re almost one of us. Welcome to the Novak Family Shit Show, brother!”

Cas just caught the almost quirk at the corner of Anna’s mouth as she picked up the phone and hung up on Gabriel without another word.

 ----------

For all that Cas was happy to see Anna finally get on board with their plan, and to have a genuine apology from Gabriel on top of that, none of it changed the fact that announcing his return at this point was less than ideal. Hell, it was all he could do to avoid thinking too hard about it. When he let his mind dwell, he only thought over and over of all the ways this was bound to implode on him, and suddenly it became hard to breathe.

He felt worse than ever when Dean arrived to pick him up for their next practice. He’d barely slept all night, and in the morning his phone had started blowing up with texts and emails and Twitter notifications. He gritted his teeth and suffered through until about 1pm, when he texted Dean a quick _turning my phone off. If you’re trying to reach me - sorry_ and went dark.

“It wouldn’t stop ringing,” Cas said, exhaustedly, when Dean asked him about it, standing halfway in the front door with his boots still on. “I must have a hundred new emails. And Twitter… I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Shit,” Dean breathed. “Anna called Becky back last night?”

“And the story broke online this morning,” Cas sighed.

“I told you people cared,” Dean said lightly, a vain attempt to lift the mood.

“Ugh, that’s the problem.” Cas rubbed at his face. “Just a couple thousand more people set up for disappointment.”

“Hey, come on, now,” Dean said.

Cas took a breath and refocused himself, turned to look for wherever he’d dumped his skate bag the night before. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll be okay. Let’s just go.”

“We can take a day off, if you’re not up for it right now,” Dean offered.

“You’re already here, we might as well go to practice. It’s not like I’ve been straining myself physically - it’s just stress.”

“Stress is stress, dude.”

Dean caught his eye, and at the concerned look, Cas paused, and he thought about it a minute, but honestly couldn’t find any part of himself willing to sit and stew in the bad feelings any longer. “I’d rather skate it out, if I’m honest,” he said. “Is that weird?”

“Nah,” Dean said, with a loose, understanding smile. “C’mon, then.”

 ----------

They returned to their usual at the rink, blowing through Back in Black again, and again, cleaner and cleaner. Progress, Cas assured himself, would be good for him, and make him feel better. Progress had always felt good, in his old life in singles and since he’d started ice dance here, with Dean. To act, move, in a way he could feel in his heart and body all at once, and to know he was doing it well, was enough to brush away everything else, all the stresses of a day or week or month. It was as sure as death and taxes to Cas, had been for years.

Which is why it made no sense to him how little the stress was helped by skating the rhumba steps that night, polished as they were to near perfection at the slower tempo.

Progress was good. _This_ progress wasn’t good _enough_. No matter how good the steps were at 90 BPM, they needed to be perfect at 105. They needed to be better than perfect if he was going to compete, and in his stress induced tunnel vision, there was no doubt in his mind that they needed to be better _now_.

The nervous energy wouldn’t leave him. It clung to his limbs and buzzed away inside every muscle of his body, and once he got started trying to shake it off, he couldn’t stop.

As they made the last turn of the umpteeth run of the night, Dean skated straight away to the stereo, and Cas stayed where he was, staring at the ice, trying, unsuccessfully, to will the tension from his body, and tuning out everything else. The starting and stopping of the way they were running practice wasn’t helping. Something was coiling to lash out inside of him, and he was just barely holding it in check.

“Let’s go to the assigned music,” he said, instead, as Dean was leaning on the boards, rewinding the tape. He looked up.

“You sure?” Dean asked.

“Aren’t you?” Cas asked, and he could hear the thinly veiled irritation in his own voice. Knowing intellectually that Dean didn’t deserve to suffer Cas’ bad mood didn’t make the outsized, misdirected anger that Cas was choosing not to act on go away.

“I mean, sure,” Dean said. His brows were furrowed, and he watched Cas apprehensively, like there was something he, too, was choosing not to say. Evidently, Cas assumed, he’d noticed the roiling energy inside of him that Cas had been trying to tamp down. “I’m just checking, dude.”

Without another word, Dean ejected the tape and replaced it with the compulsory dance music CD in the stereo’s appropriate slot, and rejoined Cas in the middle of the ice.

“Let’s just give it a few bars to feel the tempo, okay?” Dean suggested. Cas just nodded as they got into position.

The trumpets came over the cheap speakers, buzzing and crackling. They waited for the faster tempo to kick in, and then another several measures. Speeding up might be a test of memory as much as dexterity, processing the next step in less time than they’d previously been allowed, but Cas was old hat at this. This was his job. This is what he should be good at.

“Okay?” He asked Dean, painfully impatient.

“Yeah, okay,” Dean said. “Count us in?”

Cas did, and they took off.

It wasn’t a complete disaster, but it wasn’t clean, either. Their skates knocked together like they were back to square one, and once or twice they stuttered on the choreography and had to take a breath and count back in. They struggled through one repetition of the dance, made the final turn, and somehow, as if he was expecting perfection of himself unearned, Cas felt even worse.

“Let’s go again,” he sighed.

By the tenth or eleventh time around, Castiel was sure they were actually getting worse. He was getting so tense, and overexerting himself with each motion out of pure frustration, that the careful balance he had built with Dean wavered.

They were no longer moving as a team, as a collected unit. Cas overacted and Dean pulled his punches, so to speak, to compensate, and before long, without words being spoken, they were just trying to strong arm each other into falling into step. Cas just wanted Dean to keep up, to skate with as much passion as he did, but Dean instead kept his movements steady and on beat, counting the beat out loud, louder and louder and Cas could hear the frustration in it. Dean was mad. Dean was feeding off Castiel’s anger, if nothing else, and bouncing it right back to him. It only made Cas want to push himself more.

Cas swung his left leg around in a half turn with too much force, more torque than his hips could absorb, and there was a twinge in his knee where he’d twisted the joint a hair too far. He sucked in a breath against the pain, faltered, and let go of Dean. The dance came to a screeching halt as Cas bent over to rub the knee, cursing softly.

“Did you twist it?” Dean asked, gliding around to stand in front of him.

Cas straightened himself out and, leaning on his left leg, gave the whole right one a little shake. “It’s fine,” he said. “Let’s go again.”

Dean didn’t answer. He didn’t skate back to the stereo to restart the music, either. When Cas looked up, he found Dean’s eyes glued to him, almost confused, halfway to incredulous.

“What?” Cas asked.

“Dude, you’re done,” Dean said, flatly.

“No,” Cas said with a huff, anger boiling up, threatening to twist into aggression if Dean gave him a fight. “I said I’m fine. Let’s go again.”

“Let me rephrase that,” Dean said. “I know you want to go again, but I’m benching you. You’re done for tonight.”

“Why?” Cas asked.

“Because I promised Anna I’d keep you from doing anything stupid, and you clearly just hurt your knee--” Dean was cut off.

“My knee always hurts. That doesn’t mean we stop.”

“You’re radiating pissed off stupid vibes, Cas,” Dean said. “I get that you’re upset. Fine. But the way you’re going, you’re going to keep going until you hurt yourself a lot worse. I can’t let you skate like that.”

“No, I’m sorry, but you don’t get to ‘let’ me do anything,” Cas said, raising his voice. “You’re not my coach, Dean.”

“Anna is,” Dean said. “You want me to call her?”

“No! And you can both stop treating me like a child!” Cas shouted.

“You’re acting like a child! You’re acting out like a bratty teenager!” Dean shouted back.

His words stung like a slap, and lit a flame in Cas, adrenaline rush to his brain fizzling out his rational side and kicking him solidly into fight or flight mode. “Fuck off.”

“You’re not fucking immortal, Cas. You can’t take stupid risks, and you should know that better than anybody. You fucked up already and look where it got you.”

Cas stepped forward and shoved Dean, throwing him off balance and leaving him on his ass while Cas skated off, leaving Dean in the rink, and stormed into the change room.

 _Fuck him_ , Cas thought, head down as he walked. _Fuck him, fuck him, fuck him._

Where the hell did Dean get off thinking he was some sort of authority in Castiel’s life, first of all, like he was there as anything other than a guest. And how dare he accuse Cas of… fuck him. _Fuck him._

Kansas City was nobody’s fault. Kansas City just happened. Kansas City could have happened to any skater there and it wasn’t a reflection on Cas that it happened to him.

He sat himself on the bench, and reached down to unlace his skates, only to realize that his hands were shaking violently, and he instead pulled them close to his own stomach, left hand gripping the right, holding them as steady as possible and trying to ride out the adrenaline the altercation had put into his blood. His head was buzzing. His fucking _skin_ was buzzing. His mind raced with a hundred things he could have said to tell Dean off, a hundred reasons why Dean was the stupidest, most arrogant asshole on Earth.

Cas had been itching for a fight, and he’d gotten one. That realization put a shock of shame through him, but didn’t quite quell the righteous anger in his belly.

There were footsteps coming up the hall. Cas straightened, hid his weakness, and pointedly refused to look at Dean when he walked into the room. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Dean had changed into his boots, and had his skate bag slung over one shoulder.

“I’ll be in the car,” he said, and turned to go.

“Just go home,” Cas said.

Dean paused. “You need a ride.”

“I’ll take the bus,” Cas said.

“Don’t be such a fucking jackass,” Dean said.

“Would you get the fuck out?” Cas shouted, still not raising his gaze.

Dean did.

Cas sat in the change room for what felt like a long time afterwards, until his hands stopped shaking and the lump in his throat went away, and he patiently unlaced his skates, and then waited another few minutes for good measure.

Despite his best efforts, though, there was Dean’s car in the parking lot as he came out into the night air, right where they’d parked her earlier in the evening. Sobered up, some, from the inebriation of fury, Cas had to admit to himself that the bus didn’t sound that good at this time of night, him being unfamiliar with the routes. Begrudgingly, but too worn out to really stay stubborn about it, he walked to the Impala, tossed his bag in the back seat, and got in.

Dean didn’t acknowledge him, at first, except in turning the key in the ignition and putting the car into drive. Cas didn’t speak.

Eventually, Dean did try and break through the wall between them. “Cas, you gotta understand--”

Cas cut him off. “Don’t talk to me,” he said, almost cruelly. “I don’t want to talk to you. Just take me home and shut up.”

Dean muttered something bitter under his breath, and for all he was tempted to ask Dean to repeat himself, just to pick another few minutes of a fight and keep the last word, Cas stomped down the urge and stared vacantly out the window until they pulled up outside his building. Neither of them spoke again, and Cas did not look back to watch Dean drive away.

 ----------

Only when he’d had the night to cool off could Cas admit that for all Dean was a complete asshole about it, he might have had a point. And it made him all the more bitter about the whole affair.

They both knew Cas had been pushing himself too far because he was upset. Cas may not have admitted as much, but Dean was not a stupid man. Maybe he had needed a gentle reminder to slow the hell down, and Cas was not too proud to admit that, at least not to himself.

But the sheer arrogance in Dean assuming he got to make that choice on Cas’ behalf, the disrespect of threatening to go over his head to Anna, those were things he couldn’t overlook. That made his blood boil. Dean was neither Castiel’s coach, nor his father, and he didn’t get to forbid him from anything, let alone his one and only job. It wasn’t up to Dean any more than Cas’ home life, his finances, or his diet were up to Dean. Cas was not ungrateful for the work Dean had done for him over the past several weeks, but none of it entitled him to control over Castiel himself.

But all of that only put Dean in the wrong on principle. It didn’t change the fact that the argument itself had a clear winner - and it wasn’t Cas.

He wasn’t sure if Dean would even show up to get him for practice the next day, but part of him almost hoped he wouldn’t. There were brief moments in the night that he worried, though, that Dean might never be back, that that bridge may have been burned, and that Dean would be done with him over this spat. That, Cas had to admit, was a frightening thought. Maybe what he wanted in that petty, brief way, but certainly not something he was comfortable even considering as permanent.

And maybe Dean was the one who should be apologizing. But Cas could wait around for an apology that may never come, or he could be the bigger man and make this right. He was pacing his kitchen, phone in hand, writing a speech in his head that he hoped would convey an apology for his own discretions without letting Dean off the hook for his, when there was a knock at the front door, and Cas knew, before he even made it to the living room, that he wasn’t going to need to make that phone call.

“Look,” Dean began, as soon as Cas opened the door. “I know I was kind of a dick, but I stand by what I said.”

Cas sighed deeply. The resentment was already creeping back in. “So you just came here to argue some more?”

“No,” Dean said. “Can I come in, or what?”

Begrudgingly, Cas allowed it. The two men settled in, perched on opposite ends of the sofa, and for all Dean didn’t seem angry anymore, Cas wasn’t about to drop his own guard unless Dean earned it.

“I didn’t tell you to stop because I was mad at you, Cas,” Dean continued. “I was worried. I _am_ worried. And I got worked up and I said some shitty things, so first off I want to apologize for that.”

“Thank you,” Cas said, flatly.

“But I’m not apologizing for not wanting you to act like an idiot, which you were.”

Cas’ frown deepened, and his walls went right back up. He didn’t answer, refused even to look at Dean. So, that was how it was. He’d apologize for the insults, but not for the entitlement that sparked the argument in the first place. No, he was doubling down on that.

A minute or two passed in tense silence, Cas refusing to even acknowledge that Dean had spoken.

“You gonna talk to me, here, or should I just go?” Dean asked, irritated.

“You don’t get to order me around, Dean,” Cas said.

“Well, you don’t give me a lot of choice when you’re being a stubborn dick,” Dean said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Cas turned to Dean, finally. “If I wanted to do something stupid and destroy my own body, that would be my own choice. I don’t appreciate being treated like my body and my life belong to somebody else. It’s actually kind of a thing, with me, and I’m not going to compromise. You can respect my choices, no matter how stupid they are, or you can stop skating with me.”

Taking Dean in, Cas found he looked tired, worn out. And yet, there was a flicker in his face, a confusion that Cas could hope and pray was just understanding in progress.

“You admit that it was stupid?” Dean asked, finally. “The way you were overdoing it?”

“Of course I do,” Cas said. “I’m emotional, I’m not a total idiot.”

Dean huffed out a tired laugh. “Well, at least you know you’re emotional.”

“But that doesn’t excuse the way you spoke to me,” Cas reminded him. "I get to make choices for myself, Dean. Nobody else. Not even you."

“Can we at least have discussions about it when I think you’re being stupid?” Dean asked. “If I promise to respect whatever decision you make at the end of it, can we still be a real team?”

Cas considered. “Yes,” he said.

“Then I’m sorry for what I said,” Dean said. “And I won’t do it again.”

It felt too easy, all the emotion still bottled up inside Castiel. That most stubborn part of himself still wanted a fight, and as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t quite breathe that sigh of relief.

“And I’m sorry I said the injury was your fault,” Dean continued. “I know better than that and I shouldn’t have said it.”

Ah, there it was. Cas did try to breathe, then, and found that the more he did so, the more the anger inside him was replaced with fatigue. He wiped a hand over his face, suddenly so weary.

“I’m sorry I was so irritable,” Cas said, quietly, and then neither of them spoke for quite a while.

“Do you want to go to practice, today?” Dean finally asked, soft spoken, cautious around the raw emotions in the room.

“No,” Cas breathed.

Dean hesitated before asking “can I stay with you?”

“... Yes,” Cas answered, with only a brief pause to think.

“Pizza? Beer?” Dean asked. “Netflix binge of your choice, because I really am sorry and I’d like to express that by tolerating you bad taste in TV?”

Cas meant to glare at Dean, then, but the fire in his heart having been doused, and Dean being so painfully incapable of turning off the charm, Cas just hid a tired smirk, instead.


	6. Chapter 6

There was a split second upon waking when Cas’ sleep fogged brain thought he was being smothered to death.

His face was turned downward at the place where something warm and soft met something warm and _breathing_ , and when he scrambled to roll over, he discovered that the former had been a sofa cushion, and the latter had been Dean’s t-shirt clad stomach.

Oh, Cas though. Oh no.

Oh _yes_ , though his dumb, irrational gay heart.

He was sandwiched between the back of the sofa and Dean’s still sleeping body, he realized, the two of them fitting together awkwardly on the sofa, which was really not large enough to sleep two grown men. Dean’s head was resting on one of the armrests, and Cas’ feet jutted out across the other. Dean’s shirt had ridden up a little in the night, and against him, Cas could feel him snoring as easily as he heard it. He was so warm, and so close, and Cas hastily reminded himself that this was not good.

There were more beer bottled scattered across the coffee table than Cas had remembered, but he was sure they hadn’t been drinking enough for a blacked out hook up. Additionally, and to his intense relief, Cas found that both their clothes seemed to be more or less intact, and figured it was unlikely.

Panic eased, he was caught between the drive the run from the situation, and protect himself from making any further, bigger mistakes than he might have already, to deny this frankly unfair temptation, or, on the other hand, to settle back into the very comfortable and very warm space along Dean’s front, to bask in it as long as Dean stayed sleeping. Safety or joy. Brain or heart.

Empty crushes weren’t supposed to get this complicated, but that’s emotional rollercoasters and alcohol for you.

It took him a few minutes of lying there, psyching himself up, to convince himself to do the right thing, but eventually Cas forced himself to sit up, and reached over Dean for his phone on the coffee table. The display read 10:32am, and while it was early enough for Cas to be waking, he felt a little spark of panic realizing just how late it was for Dean.

“Dean, wake up,” Cas said, slapping gently at the other man’s thigh. “You’re late for work.”

Dean rolled over, and almost off the sofa, blinking groggily. “What?” He asked through a yawn. “Did I fall asleep?”

“We both did,” Cas said. “It’s ten thirty.”

“In the morning?”

Cas nodded. He couldn’t help notice how handsome Dean was with bed head, and had to mentally give himself a cold shower.

“Oh, fuck.” Dean stumbled to his feet, still shaking cloudiness from his mind, and started frantically looking around the room for anything he’d brought in with him. “Cas, I gotta go.”

“I know,” Cas said. “Do you want to shower here?” Stupid.

“I’m gonna get greasy at work, and sweaty at practice tonight,” Dean said, shoving his phone and wallet into his jean pockets. “This is the cleanest I’m gonna be all day, and I'm running late already.”

“Okay,” Cas said. “Then I’ll just see you tonight?”

“Usual time,” Dean said. He stopped at the door to jam his feet into his boots, and paused when he straightened up. “And, uh, Cas?” He asked.

“Yes?”

“We’re good, right?”

“Of course, Dean,” Castiel said.

Dean shot him a smile. “Awesome,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”

The door fell shut behind Dean, and Cas eventually had to stop hovering awkwardly in his own living room, phone in hand, staring at the front door as if Dean might come back at any moment. He sat back down on the sofa, only glanced as his phone with the notion of going through his notifications for a moment before, again, deciding the press could wait another day, and tossed the phone back onto the coffee table. Instead, Cas elected to lie back down, drag a blanket up from where it had fallen on the ground the night before, and burrow into the body warmed cushions.

His heart felt about eight sizes too big, but nobody was there to judge him in his own home, then. He could fight it into submission after another few hours of sleep. And if his sweet dreams wandered between performing endless, flawless triple axels and holding Dean close, permitted more than those lingering touches, well, nobody had to know about that.

\---------- 

That Wednesday, they graduated to practice with Sam and Jess. Skating with them was a middle ground between skating alone and letting everybody else see them, and it was just barely inside Cas’ comfort zone. They’d gotten good enough that Cas was no longer totally mortified at the thought of being watched, and they’d probably have to practice with everybody else when Meg arrived, anyway, so he might as well get used to it now.

They kept up the rhumba steps, trading use of the stereo with Sam and Jess every fifteen or twenty minutes, but had moved on somewhat into twizzles, which were not in themselves new to Cas, but stringing so many together, synchronizing them with a partner, and for real points, made him a little dizzy at first. He went width wise across the rink and back a few times, just holding his free leg out of the way, before trying to do the same in unison with Dean to a beat. Their first attempts were embarrassingly awful, but that’s what first attempts are for, Cas tried to remind himself.

Sam and Jess were encouraging and kind, as ever, and while Cas privately wished they wouldn't stop their own practice to watch him and Dean quite so often, he appreciated them being among the first to see his progress.

It was also good to see them skate again, in person and not just on television, even if it was a little humbling to be reminded, watching Sam toss Jess around like she was a frisbee, that pairs skaters are borderline superhuman.

“We could do that,” Dean said, as they were taking a break and watching the happy couple work on a death spiral.

“Dean, no,” Cas said.

“C’mon, take my hand.”

“ _No_.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” Dean said, as if he himself wasn’t behaving like a child.

“Are you prepared to go flying across the ice when I drop you?” Cas asked.

“Shit, Cas, that sounds like more fun that doing it right,” Dean laughed.

Begrudgingly, but with very little additional pestering, Cas took Dean’s hand. They skated a slow backwards loop around their half of the rink before Cas was ready for the entry.

“Now?” He asked.

“Do it,” Dean said.

Cas turned sharply, bent his knees, and planted one toe pick in the ice surface. Holding tight to his hand, Dean was whipped into tight, low circles around a slowly turning Cas, not low enough to count for anything in competition, and with his body bent gracelessly, but lower than Cas would have guessed they’d be able to manage with zero practice. Where Cas hadn’t been wrong, however, was in the force of the spin being too much for the strength of his unpracticed grip.

“Dean,” he began, about to warn him.

“What?” Dean asked, a split second before his sweaty palm slipped out of Castiel’s grasp.

Losing his counterbalance, Cas fell, hard, on his ass. Dean, however, careened across the ice, flopping over himself like a fish, and eventually slowed, and slid to a halt just short of running into Sam’s blades where he and Jess had been standing and watching the trainwreck unfold.

Dean was laughing, hysterically.

“What the hell was that?” Sam asked, amused.

“That was _awesome_ ,” Dean answered, shaking with laughter. “Oh my God, Sam, do you think we could string more of us together for, like, a long armed death spiral? You, then me, then Cas, and we’ll swing Jess around at like a million miles per hour?”

“Dean, no!” Cas shouted across the rink.

“I mean, we could try,” Jess mused.

“Jess, no!” Sam said.

Cas, too tired for most of this nonsense on a good day, went back to his break, sitting on the barrier wall with a bottle of water, and enjoyed the free show of Jess and Dean chasing Sam around the rink, trying to convince him on the move they were suddenly insisting on calling the ‘megadeth (spiral)’.

He’d spent three years only knowing Dean through his relationship with his brother, he realized, and since getting to know Dean, while he could certainly talk about his job, movies, skating, the only life stories he’d ever shared fondly have been of Sam. Every childhood memory, every precious keepsake, was relating primarily to his brother. In fact, Cas had never once heard Dean speak of the still mysterious time when they were parted while Sam was in California.

Dean clearly loved Jess like family. They would make good in-laws. And Sam would never, Cas knew, make Dean feel any less important a part of his life than his fiancée was, at least not on purpose. But he wondered how Dean could possibly move into a world where the first person in his life, his first call in times of trouble, his partner in life since childhood, might not be able to rank him the same way.

Dean had made so much of himself into Sam’s caretaker. Cas couldn’t help but worry about where Dean would fit in a life where Sam didn’t need one anymore.

 ----------

Cas had thought that their first daytime practice, on Saturday, with Kevin and Gilda, Anna attending, would be the biggest emotional hurdle since Cas’ first day back on the ice. He was certain he would feel insecure - ashamed, even, of the current state of his skating - and hate every moment. He had been, mercifully, completely wrong.

Gilda skated over to hug him immediately, and Kevin rallied up a little more enthusiasm that his endlessly tired, high school senior slash world class athlete self usually had to spare. They peppered him with questions, about where and how he’d been, about the change in disciplines, about Meg, and with no need to lie, no elephant in the room to dance around like there had been at the engagement party, Cas didn’t feel anxious at all. In fact, his heart was warmed being back to see his friends, and to be their colleague again.

Dean, on the other hand, Cas couldn’t help but notice, laced up slowly, took the ice nervously, and asked Cas for a break about the moment Anna came over to criticize their sloppy edges.

He was off his game, and with nothing but concern, Cas followed him into the locker room only to find him sitting, sullen and alone.

“Something’s wrong,” Cas said, a statement and not a question.

“Sorry, I’m just kind of being shitty today, apparently,” Dean said. “It’s nothing. I’ll be fine by Tuesday.”

“What, when Meg gets here?” Cas asked. He quickly put two and two together. “You don’t want the others seeing you skate?”

“C’mon, Cas. We both know I’m just not very good,” Dean said, betraying in an instant a truer nature than he’d probably intended. “Meg’ll get you where you need to be, and you won’t have Anna on your case about the stupid little things anymore.”

“Dean, you’re a fine skater,” Cas said. “You’re good.”

“Okay, sure, but good really isn’t up to snuff with you guys, you know?” Dean replied.

“It’s enough when you’re with me, and with Sam and Jess,” Cas said. “We’re all as accomplished as anybody else here today. More so, even.”

Dean glanced up, surprised. “Not that I’m not glad to see some of your confidence back, Cas, but you’re not exactly back to your fighting weight, yet.”

“Yes, and you still outpace me, at least in strength and stamina,” Cas said. “And no, your movements aren’t as refined as everybody else's here. But do you think they’re all out there expecting you, who’s never competed or even been coached, to skate at their same level?”

Dean snorted a humorless laugh. “Well, it sounds stupid when you say it like that,” he said. “I don’t know, man, I guess it just kinda sucks that Meg’s coming in and she’ll be at your level, and you’ll be up to speed in a few weeks, and you’re not gonna need me anymore.”

Dean was smirking, playing it off as a joke, but Cas could see through the cracks of his mask, to the naked hurt underneath.

“Of course I’m still going to need you,” Cas said. He was a bit uncertain that it was the right thing to say, but as certain as he could have been that it was true, and that it was a truth Dean needed to hear, and knew that it was worth the risk. The possibility that it constituted asking too much from Dean had to fall by the wayside.

“For what?” Dean asked, clearly disbelieving.

“I’m still scared, Dean,” Cas confessed. “The stakes are still very high for me. I need you because you make me feel like I can do this.”

Dean averted his eyes, and rubbed at the back of his neck. Feelings - at least, his own feelings - were clearly not Dean’s strong suit, despite his knack for knowing the right thing to say to comfort others.

“Jeez,” Dean whispered, under his breath.

“And your friendship gives me some other part of my life to want to fight for,” Cas continued. He feared he’d gone too far already, crossed some unspoken boundary, but barreled on nevertheless. “If this doesn’t work out for me…”

“Don’t think that way, Cas,” Dean said, suddenly concerned.

“But if it doesn’t,” Cas insisted. “I can survive it this time. I don’t know how, but it’s not like the void skating leaves in me is all of me, anymore. It’s still most of me, don’t get me wrong, but I can find other reasons to get out of bed in the morning.”

Dean was silent for a distressingly long period of time, clearly pensive, but otherwise unreadable.

Cas started to worry. He thought he’d seen into Dean’s need to be needed, but what if he’d misinterpreted? Worse, what if Dean wouldn’t be willing to put forth the effort anymore, but was too polite to admit it, if Cas could never bring home a medal to show for it? Something creeped up into Cas’ chest, a feeling of inadequacy he’d tried so hard to kill for so many years.

“That, um…” Dean made a false start, composed himself, and began again. “That means a lot, Cas. Thank you.”

“You want to stay on?” Cas asked, desperate to allay his own fears, then. “Even if it’s just tagging along to practice?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, looking up. “If you’ll have me, of course I will.”

“And if this doesn’t work out…” Cas repeated.

Dean reached out quickly to still Cas, taking his hand. “I said don't think like that, Cas,” he said. “Please.”

“But if…” Cas left the hypothetical open, unfinished.

It Dean a moment to process just what Cas was asking of him. “Of course,” he said.

Cas exhaled, fear flowing out of him with the breath, muscles he didn't know he had been clenching relaxing.

“C’mon, dude, did you really think I was just hanging out with you for your rad ice dance connections?” Dean laughed.

“I was hoping not,” Cas said. “But I appreciate you allaying my concerns.”

“Hey, you kick my insecurity in the ass, I’ll kick yours,” Dean said. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

“It’s certainly one of the perks.”

Dean stood, pushing himself up off the bench with an exaggerated sound of effort. He took a deep, steadying breath. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s go suck in front of some future Olympians.”

Cas felt a smile pull at his mouth, and with a little pride in his heart, followed Dean back to the rink.

\----------

Cas met Charlie again the next day, when she tagged along on Dean’s coattails to watch practice, offering sandwiches from the cafe across the street as payment for permission to creep on the skaters.

“C’mon, Cas,” Dean begged on his friend’s behalf. “She’s super quiet, and she’s never spread gossip. Not once.”

“I trust you, Charlie,” Cas said. “But it isn’t up to me. You’re going to need Anna’s permission.”

“Or you could just not tell her,” Charlie said hopefully, approximating puppy dog eyes and wiggling the turkey club at him, an ill gotten bribe.

Cas sighed, not wanting to deny Charlie, not really, and figuring it wasn’t like he himself would be in trouble if they were found out. He took the sandwich, and pretended not to notice Charlie spinning around to high five Dean.

“Do you always sneak her in?” Cas asked Dean. “I’m sorry, Charlie, I never noticed you around before.”

“Charlie’s only been a real skating nut for a few months,” Dean said. “Never snuck her in before you took your break. Now, though? Yeah, every so often.”

“The other skaters know,” Charlie said, in her own defense, as she climbed the steps to the tiny smattering of seats around the rink. “I’m not being a total creep, it’s just… off the record.”

“I see,” Cas said. They all sat down on the plastic stadium chairs, Dean and Charlie on either side of Castiel. Dean swung his feet up to rest on the back of the seat in front of him and dug into his lunch. Their conversation fell off as they ate.

Cas was, admittedly, curious as to what it must be like to watch practice from a fan’s perspective - no polish, often no music, sometimes just day after day of falling, and falling, and falling, while learning something completely new. To an untrained eye, Kali and Gilda might just as well have been milling about the rink, repeating the same tiny motion ad nauseum, sometimes breaking into something impressive, a spin or a jump, but rarely, and not usually very well.

But Charlie was rapt. Her eyes traced Gilda around the rink as she ironed out her newest step sequence. Charlie may as well have been watching a world record breaking masterpiece performance, for the pure focus she gave to the skater.

Dean watched Cas, watching Charlie, watching Gilda, and snorted out a laugh. “Charlie, you’re so obvious,” Dean said.

“What?” She asked. “You see how she does that… that thing? With her foot?”

“Thing with her foot?” Dean asked, breaking out into laughter.

“Shut up! I don’t know stuff about stuff!” Charlie snapped, and stubbornly turned away from Dean, back to watching the rink, though with a residual glare.

“She _is_ very talented,” Cas said, in Charlie’s defence. “As a fan, to get to see somebody like Gilda practice, it must be a wonderful experience.”

“Mm-hm,” Charlie replied, her mouth full of sandwich.

“Oh, she’s more than a fan,” Dean said, with a little smirk.

“Dean, no!” Charlie blurted out - her mouth, regrettably, still full of sandwich, and she had to throw a hand over her mouth to keep from spitting bites of half chewed bread all over the men.

“Oh, come on!” Dean whined. “Cas is cool! Let me tell him.”

“What?” Cas asked, and when he looked over, Charlie had slid most of the way down in her seat, Converse on the back of the seat in front, bending her knees over her body and becoming a pretzel of pure embarrassment. Her face was bright red.

It clicked.

“You have a crush?” Cas asked, unable to keep from smiling at the sweetness of her embarrassment over it. “That’s not something to be ashamed of, Charlie. She’s very pretty.”

“Ugh.” Charlie buried her face in her hands. “You guys, she’s _so_ pretty. I hate her.”

“You love her,” Dean sing songed in a tease, reaching his leg across Cas’ personal space to kick Charlie in a playful way.

“She’s wearing a crop top and gloves at the same time, Dean. That’s like my Amortentia. It should be _illegal_.”

“Amor-what?” Cas asked, and was soundly ignored.

“Your kinks suck,” Dean said. “You fall for a skater and you ignore flexibility, core strength, and thighs of steel, for crop tops?”

“It’s not either-or, Dean,” Charlie said.

“What’s stopping you from asking her out?” Cas asked. “I can’t say I know if she’s that way inclined, but the worst she can do is say no, right?”

“Charlie _has_ asked Gilda out,” Dean said. “At the coffee shop. Why do you think she suddenly became such a skating geek?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Cas said. “I didn’t realize she’d already rejected you.”

“She didn’t…” Charlie said, embarrassed. “We’ve hooked up.”

Well, Cas thought, that was certainly one way to find out about something he and Gilda had in common. He’d never have suspected Gilda was into women, but Gilda had probably never suspected Cas was into men. It was the struggle of life in the closet, he supposed, that those living it could be, by necessity, blind to each other.

“Like a dozen plus times,” Dean said, smiling fondly at his friend. “They’re basically dating.”

“No, if we were dating, we’d like, go outside together once in awhile. Or ever.” Charlie sighed, deeply. She sat up, fast, the soles of her shoes slapping against the concrete floor as she let her legs fall back down in an exasperated huff. “I thought closeted hookups were gay dude things. I’m supposed to be adopting cats and watching Grey’s Anatomy with her. Moving in. Meeting her parents.”

“Orphan Black couple’s cosplay,” Dean added.

“She’s be the cutest Delphine, right?” Charlie said, voice unabashedly veering into whining. “But no. It’s a big secret.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cas said, trying to be comforting. “Is it that she’s closeted, or do you just have different priorities in your relationship?”

“You tell me!” Charlie exclaimed. “I have no idea. I mean, I know this isn’t exactly the Castro, but I don’t understand why we’ve gotta be all cloak and dagger about this. Would it really be the end of the world if some tabloid gave us the ‘gal pal’ treatment?”

“You deserve better, Charlie,” Dean said. “She’s not hot enough for you to be this stressed out over her. Right, Cas?”

Castiel looked back to the rink, and tried to put aside his hang ups and consider the question. He wasn’t exactly an expert in women’s looks, but it didn’t take an expert to acknowledge that Gilda was pretty. Her hair was whipping around her face as she skated, the crop top did indeed show off a beautiful figure, and Dean wasn’t wrong about skaters having thighs of steel. He saw what must have drawn Charlie to her in the first place. But, regrettably, he also had been on Gilda’s side of the equation.

“I’m sorry,” Cas said. “I don’t think I can give you the answer you want to hear. Coming out as an athlete is different. Mostly, we just don’t - at least not in this sport.”

“How do you mean?” Charlie asked.

“Skating is judged subjectively,” Cas said. “Judges are subject to personal bias. Not to mention media backlash, or completing in any of the international events in less welcoming parts of the world. And as a woman in this sport, I’m sure Gilda’s subject to incredible pressure to conform to a standard of femininity that a lot of people would think was tarnished by her sexuality.”

“Aren’t there a lot of gay dudes in the sport, though?” Charlie asked. “Maybe not women so much, but dudes, for sure.”

“Yes, and everybody knows it,” Cas said. “But when you actually look at it, not very many of us are out, especially during our competitive careers.”

“I didn’t know you were gay,” Dean said, cutting in.

“I’m not out, publicly, so don’t spread it around,” Cas said. “It’s up to me when, if ever, I decide I want people to know, and frankly, Charlie, I’m sorry, but it’s up to Gilda when they should know about her.”

“I guess I hadn’t really thought about it like that,” Charlie admitted. “It’s still shitty, though. Having to hide.”

“I understand,” Cas said. “Nobody _likes_ having to hide. But if it’s a real dealbreaker for you, you don’t have to stay with her. Especially if it’s just casual between you two.”

“Nah,” Charlie said, looking back to the rink, where Gilda and Kali were chatting along the boards. “It’s stupid, but I do kind of love her, you know?”

“Aw,” Dean said, and reached over to pat Charlie’s knee. “We’re here for you, kiddo. You wanna get some ice cream? Binge the original trilogy?”

Charlie sighed, heavy and not without sadness, but smiled. “Sad gays skate club,” she said. “We should get jackets.”

“Dean can be an honorary member,” Cas said. “Our token Contented Heterosexual.”

“Oh, no, dude, I thought you knew,” Dean said. “I’m-- well, I’m not gay, but I do date men. I’m bisexual.”

“Oh,” Cas said, eyes going wide.

_Oh._

“Sam never said?”

“No,” Cas said. “I’m sorry I assumed.”

“It’s cool,” Dean said. “I never asked you, either.”

“So, c’mon, Sad Gays Skate Club or nah?” Charlie interrupted, insistent and excited after the promise of ice cream and Star Wars. “Tonight? I’ve got the DVDs, so you guys are picking up the tab at Ben and Jerry’s.”

“You little shit, you still owe me from like every pizza night, ever,” Dean laughed.

Cas tried to focus up and follow the rest of their conversation, knew he should really be aware of the evening’s plans he was going to wind up roped into, but there he was, chemically imbalanced, irrationally romantic, and Dean was bisexual.

Alas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An edit from 2018: the megadeath (spiral) lives. It was a dumb joke, here, but then like eight months later, I saw Duhamel, Radford, Weaver, and Polje whip it out and actually do it at Stars on Ice Canada. good lord.


	7. Chapter 7

Of course, the revelation that Cas could have had a shot with Dean (even if, admittedly, it was a shot he knew full well he should never take) would come almost immediately before the end of their time skating together.

Meg drove into town in a Jeep full of cardboard boxes, and Dean and Castiel offered to help her move into her new apartment, if only to get the long awaited face-to-face out of the way before their first practice together.

“Obviously, we’re going to have to pick up the pace to get into qualifying competitions for Nationals,” Meg said, standing in her new kitchen, cutting open a box of newspaper wrapped dishes. “But honestly? We can probably keep polishing our dances through the Fall and even into Winter.”

“We still don’t have a coach,” Dean said, dropping off another box on the counter top. “But Anna’s got a choreographer who can take you guys whenever you’re ready.”

“Oh yeah, Cas was saying,” Meg recalled. “Canadian?”

“Donna Hanscum,” Cas called from the living room, from where he’d been listening to the conversation while shelving books. He crossed into the kitchen to join them, standing in the doorway. “Works out of Toronto, so we’ll have to make a trip out.”

“Ugh.” Meg’s nose wrinkled up in distaste. “Canada.”

“What’d our proud neighbours to the North ever do the you?” Dean joked.

“ _Scott and Tessa,_ ” Meg said, sneering as if the words physically pained her.

Dean snorted. “You make a lot of friends with that opinion?” He asked.

“I didn’t come here to make friends, Hasselhoff,” Meg said, fixing Dean with a look. Her mouth was smiling, but the look in her eyes gave the distinct impression that she could end him without breaking a sweat. “I came here becomes my ex partner knifed an ISU judge in a Walgreens parking lot, and I just might be able to hammer Brave Tin Soldier over here into a qualified replacement.”

Cas winced at the moniker, and by the look on his face, Dean noticed. Their eyes met, and Castiel tried to silently beg Dean to just let the insult slide. He wasn’t willing to start a fight over it at this early stage. Thankfully, Dean must have gotten to message, because he visibly reigned his anger in, and didn’t mention the slight.

“Is that actually where your partner went?” Dean asked, instead. He kept a stern face. Maybe that revelation wasn’t as frightening for Dean as it was for Cas - or maybe he couldn't truly fear a woman short enough that she could barely reach her own cupboards.

“Azazel?” Meg asked. “Yeah. I mean, he’ll get out of prison eventually, but then there’s the whole lifetime ban thing. But why cry over spilt milk? He’s dead to me.”

“Wow,” Dean deadpanned.

“Wow,” Meg teased back, waggling her eyebrows. “Tonya Harding, eat your heart out.”

“What about your old coach, Meg?” Cas asked, as much as he’d perhaps rather not associate with anymore of Meg’s connections than he really needed to.

“Yeah, no. PR disaster. You wouldn’t want him - even if he would take me back.”

“Would he?” Cas asked.

“No,” Meg said. “Won’t even return my calls.”

Cas sighed, and turned to Dean. “We’re about out of leads on this, honestly.”

“Anna’ll do the paperwork, but she doesn’t coach ice dance,” Dean said, for Meg’s benefit.

“Meanwhile, you’ve got me,” Meg said, cheerily. “Lucky you.”

“Lucky us,” Dean said, forcing a tight smile.

\---------- 

“She’s not that bad, Dean,” Cas implored, as they climbed into the Impala. Dean hadn’t said anything to him, not out loud, but he hadn’t had to - Cas had been able to feel the tension in the room all day, pouring off of Dean in waves. “She’s just snarky.”

“She’s the bitterest bitch I’ve ever met,” Dean scoffed. “She called you names, Cas. She made fun of your leg.”

“She didn’t mean anything--” Cas tried to say, but Dean cut him off.

“It doesn’t matter if she meant anything by it - she still said it.”

Cas sighed, heavily, and let his head fall back against the leather seat.

“What do you want me to do, Dean?” He asked. “Okay, Meg is mean. She’s also a good skater and the only option I’ve got. I can’t skate with you forever.”

Dean grumbled something Cas couldn't quite make out, and turned over the engine.

“I’ll get used to her,” Cas said, making an attempt at soothing Dean’s anger. “So will you.”

“I know I’m not some professional skating matchmaker, here, and I haven’t been batting a thousand,” Dean said, flicking his indicator and pulling out into the street. “But I’d hoped I hadn’t set you up with somebody who’s gonna do you more harm than good.”

“I want to skate,” Cas said. “This is how. Meg is how.”

“I don’t like her, Cas,” Dean sighed.

“I know that, but I think I dislike her less than you do,” Cas said. “I can handle myself, and I can deal with some teasing.”

“And if Azazel Whatsisface knifes you in a Wegman’s parking lot?” Dean asked.

“Walgreen’s,” Cas corrected him. “And it would be a tragedy. I’ve always dreamed of dying in a knife fight at a _Waffle House_ , as God intended, and to come so close, philosophically, only to be done in at the wrong establishment…”

“That’s not funny,” Dean said, stubbornly looking forward, mouth set in a frown.

“It’s kind of funny,” Cas countered.

“It’s not,” Dean said. “And, hell, speaking of waffles, you as hungry as I am?”

“Please don’t take me to a Waffle House,” Cas said. “Denny’s at minimum.”

Dean tsked. “You’re not a cheap date, you know that?”

Cas soothed Dean’s upset by buying him enough bacon and overly-syrupy pancakes that they both forgot their troubles, at least for a few short hours.

\---------- 

The evening of Meg’s first practice in Lawrence was also the evening after an appointment with Doctor Barnes at the sports injury clinic, just to go over his progress, and Cas drove himself. Half his reasoning was that Dean was at work in the afternoons, and was not Cas’ personal chauffeur, thank you very much, and the other half was figuring that his own car needed a run, anyway, the keep the battery from going flat on him if he really needed it.

Parking his own car at the rink was kind of odd, and in spite of how silly it was, walking into the building alone set him on edge. Or, at least, more on edge than he would have been anyway, coming right from an appointment and going into training with a woman who’d already proven herself to be difficult, at best.

Inside, Meg was already on the ice, leaning against the boards, and talking across them to Anna, while Dean sat on a bench near the door, paper coffee cup in hand, and, for lack of a better word, sulked. Cas felt a little pang of disappointment noticing Dean was not wearing his skates, nor was his bag anywhere to be seen. He hadn’t been sure what else he was expecting, but it stung nonetheless.

“How’d it go?” Dean asked, when he saw Cas coming over.

“She says I’m doing fine,” Cas said, sitting down beside Dean to lace up. “Be careful on the left ankle, no jumping, so on and so forth. Same as ever.”

“And the pain?”

“She says some pain is normal,” Cas said, and it wasn’t quite a lie.

In fact, Dr. Barnes had only barely admitted to that fact, and followed it up with a very long lecture about how any pain above and beyond his usual off-ice aches and pains, anything intense enough that he became distracted or limited by it, was probably enough that he should come right back to her and have it checked out with x-rays and ultrasounds. But that sounded like a real pain in the ass, and like a good set of excuses Anna could use to to keep him off the ice, so if he kept it to himself and played through the pain, that was Castiel’s own business.

“What’re they chatting about?” Cas asked, abruptly changing the subject.

“Introductions,” Dean said. “I think we’re setting choreography trip dates today.”

“Are you coming?”

“I’ll come, sure, but I’m not flying. It’s only a two day trip by car. One, if I really push it.”

“Only?” Cas asked. That still seemed like a long time to be on the road at a stretch.

Dean shrugged. “My baby needs to stretch her legs, too,” he said, then thought about it a moment, and scrunched up his face thinking harder about it. “Or, wheels. Something like that. Anyway, you guys can fly, I’ll just meet you in Toronto.”

“I don’t mind driving with you, if you want the company,” Cas said.

“I know you don’t _mind_ ,” Dean said. “But people go stir crazy in cars all day if they’re not used to it. I don’t blame you for not having my tolerance for it.”

“I want to,” Cas cut in. “If you’ll have me, I’d really like the trip. I haven’t been out of town since Nationals.”

“Kansas City is hardly out of town,” Dean said with a chuckle.

“Fine, then. NHK Trophy,” Cas corrected himself, and continued. “I’d really like to see more than just a rink, a hotel room, and an airport.”

“Alright,” Dean said, slouching back against the wall. “Two days, we’ll meet Bitch Queen there.”

“Could you at least keep your voice down if you’re going to insult her when she’s in the room?” Cas asked.

“Nope,” Dean said, with just the hint of a grin that he hid behind a sip of his coffee.

Cas sighed, but elected to allow Dean this pettiest of revenges instead of rehashing that old argument.

He put on his skates, and laced up, but stayed on the bench beside Dean while he waited for Meg and Anna to finish their conversation.

Two days in a car, presumably sharing a hotel room somewhere around Chicago, sounded like something Cas should probably avoid if he was still looking to squash the butterflies in his stomach that still sometimes acted up when Dean was near, but he honestly couldn’t be bothered to worry about it anymore. It would pass, or it wouldn’t. He wasn’t going to start anything, but sabotaging his relationship with Dean - platonic though it may be - over something as stupid as a little misplaced dopamine and his attraction to handsome men, of which Dean just happened to be one, was stupider than having the crush in the first place. He’d come to a kind of truce with his own heart in that way.

And if he kept putting himself in situations that only fueled that fire, well, that was something he could live to regret.

“Wait,” Dean said, after a few minutes of companionable silence, having come to a belated realization. “If you haven’t left town since Nationals, did you not go home and see your family? They’re in Illinois, aren’t they?”

“I had Anna and Gabriel here,” Cas said. “We’ve got a lot of other relatives, but we don’t really talk to anybody else. It’s not exactly a warm relationship.”

“Like ‘not warm’ distant, or ‘not warm’ bad?” Dean asked.

Cas thought about it for a moment, searching for the right words. “Distant, but with a fair amount of manipulation and disrespect,” Cas said. “I think when a family name reaches bad soap opera levels of prestige, and produces so many academics, and CEOs, and politicians, they care less about children as children, and more as projects - future family success stories.”

“You’re a successful adult, now,” Dean said. “They must love you.”

“Yes, but…” Cas frowned, considering. “Can I give you an example?”

“Sure.”

“Anna was nobody in our family until she was the junior ladies World silver medalist,” Cas said. “And then they spent more time bragging about her to others than congratulating her. Bragging about how, clearly, it was all the top notch coaching they’d paid for, the good breeding of our family, and I know we had certain advantages, and I'm grateful for them - God knows Gabriel and I still more or less live off inherited money - but Anna didn’t buy that medal. She worked hard, every day, and gave everything she had to her skating. She deeply resented most of the adults in our lives, and I agreed.

“My experience was mostly the same. I’ve never been as successful internationally as Anna was, but I think we felt the same way. My success or failure was my family’s business, and I was just meant to be the body being moved around. My oldest brother chose my coaches in Chicago and then Detroit, all my choreographers, and he, or one of my aunts or uncles, signed all the cheques, so it was a family affair. They didn’t know or care how much we invested of ourselves.”

“So you left?” Dean asked.

“Anna left,” Cas said. “She retired and asked me if I wanted to work with her in Kansas. No more Novak family money, or influence. Just us. Just skating. I could have kept letting them open doors for me, worked my ass off and medaled at Worlds, maybe, but it would have been for them to have another token of success. It wouldn't have been for me.

“I can do things--” Cas cut himself off, and hesitated a moment. Dean waited patiently for him to continue. “I _could_ do things, that only a few dozen people in the world can do. I don’t see third or fourth or fifth as failure just because a few of them can do it better than I could.”

When Cas didn’t continue any further, Dean asked, quietly, “It’s not really the championship title you miss at all, is it?”

Cas shook his head.

“I couldn’t care less,” he said. “I just want to skate again.”

“And if that means you have to learn to get along with Meg…” Dean said.

“Then of course, I’ll do it,” Cas said. “And I’ll do my physiotherapy, and I’ll wrap my ankle and my knee when they hurt, and I’ll drive to Toronto, and I’ll go into ice dance knowing full well that I’m probably never going to touch the podium there. And I’m going to do it for myself.”

Dean didn’t speak, and for a lack of words, he instead reached across Cas’ back and draped his arm over his shoulders. A silent gesture that spoke volumes, Cas thought, and in return, he took Dean’s hand in his own, an acknowledgement and a recognition.

“That’s some deep shit, man,” Dean admitted.

“It’s fine,” Cas said. “I just have to fight a little harder than I used to, that’s all. And I never had you in my life before now. Not really.”

“How do you mean?” Dean asked.

“Just that you always seem to know how to help, and since Anna’s not with me in the same way she used to be, as a coach, it’s just… it’s nice not to be alone,” Cas said. His mouth felt dry. “You’re one of the most generous people I’ve ever met, Dean.”

Dean curled in on himself, a little, and turned his face away from Castiel, but didn’t retract his hand. “Don’t be stupid,” he said, quietly.

“I’m not being stupid,” Cas scoffed. “Well, maybe I am, but not about this. Give yourself some credit.”

“I’m not doing the skating. I don’t deserve the credit just for organizing it a little,” Dean said. “Not any more than your family did for paying your coaching fees.”

Cas thought about it, but though he wasn’t sure he could find a good reason he could put into words, he knew it wasn’t the same. Dean was not Michael. He wasn't a puppet master. He knew Dean was more than that, and he knew Dean deserved… something. Maybe credit was the wrong word, but something.

“They didn’t do it out of love,” Cas said, simply, a touch of hesitation in his heart just at the vulnerability the statement implied. “They put themselves into my career for their own benefit. I’m sharing this with you because _I_ want to.”

“Love,” Dean repeated, softly and to himself, not as a question, but as an acknowledgement, and something in Cas’ chest twisted. His face was very suddenly hot, and a shock of fear passed through him, that this, finally, would be too much, too much of an admission, too much of a transgression.

“Of a kind,” he blurted out, rushing to his own defense.

“Thank you, Cas,” Dean said, softly. “It’s, um, it’s more of a gift than you probably realize. Thank you for letting me be part of this.”

Cas decompressed. They lapsed into warm silence, sitting side by side on the bench, until the ladies called Cas onto the ice, but he knew he would be replaying the conversation in his head for the rest of the evening.

 ----------

Meg and Cas’ first practice as a team was the complete emotional opposite of Dean and Cas’ first practice together. That night with Dean had been an intimidating endeavor that Cas found easy and pleasant once they got going. He hadn’t exactly been overjoyed to get in the rink with Meg, but he’d been comfortable with the idea of it, which proved to have been a fatal mistake, he realized as soon as they got going, and Meg spent the next two hours giving Cas hell about his footwork.

Which, to a point, may have been fair. Cas wasn’t up to snuff, and he knew it. He was only just getting over his long absence from the rink, and any awareness of his partner he’d managed to build skating with Dean over the past few weeks vanished when skating with Meg, whose proportions and quirks of movement were nothing like Dean’s. They managed to skate to the rhumba music, sure, but just barely, and Meg ended the practice session with bruises on her shins where Cas had inadvertently kicked her, which he did actually feel pretty bad about.

It wasn’t until after practice that Cas realized that half of adjusting to skating with Meg was going to be defending her to Dean each and every time they saw each other, but the argument on that particular night was short lived.

That day, of all the days he felt the most like giving into his weakness and seeking comfort in Dean’s company, they said goodbye in the parking lot, each got into their separate vehicles, and Cas went home alone.

\---------- 

Toronto was set in stone, three weeks off, which gave the team a week or so to make music selections and send them up to Donna.

“I can get started without, but it’ll help to know what you’re goin’ for,” Donna said, over speaker phone. Cas, Meg, Dean, and Anna were all crowded in a circle around Anna’s cellphone, in the hallway outside Anna’s office, which could just barely accommodate three adults, but not four, as they’d discovered just a few minutes prior.

Donna was a cheerful woman, clearly, with a thick regional accent that only made her sound that much more wholesome and homey, and like she ought to be the star of a cutesy cartoon about a Tim Horton’s swilling lumberjack whose best friends were a moose and a beaver.

Dean was beaming from the moment he heard her voice. He must have been fucking jumping for joy at the prospect of meeting this woman. If nothing else, Cas found the smile infectious, a good influence on his mood.

“I’m sorry, Meg, I don’t know your programs that well,” she continued. “What do you usually skate to? Or will you be going with Cas’ usual fare?”

“What, that folksy stuff?” Meg asked.

“I’m open to compromise, of course,” Cas answered.

“Well, let me know,” Donna said. “I’m sure I can find some of your old programs on YouTube and take a look at what kind of choreography you’re into that way, save us all some time tweaking it when you get here.”

“Hey, Donna,” Anna interrupted. “Not that it should change the program fundamentally, but we’re trying to avoid putting too much stress on Cas’ right leg, knee and ankle, if we can help it.”

“I’m fine,” Cas butted in. He shouldn’t have been as ashamed as he was of his injury, he knew, but part of him was terrified of being treated with kid gloves, at Anna’s insistence. That might almost feel like more of a failure than actual failure.

“How much stress are we talking?” Donna asked.

“He can’t jump on it at all,” Anna said. “I don’t think there’s too much in ice dance that could hurt him, but it’s something you should probably be aware of.”

“No problemo! I’ll keep an eye out, try and focus on the left.”

“Thank you, Donna,” Anna said, a slight sing song in her voice, betraying the casual familiarity between them - though Anna had still not betrayed the details of the Olympic Village shenanigans that had led to Donna owing her such a favour.

“Don’t you even mention it,” Donna said. “Hey, do you two need a pick up from the airport? I could save ya the taxi fare.”

“We’re driving,” Cas said.

“What?” Meg asked, an incredulous pang in her voice, and in that moment Cas realized he’d completely neglected to actually have this discussion with Meg, as if she wasn’t a key member of the team. He wasn’t too proud of that.

“Dean doesn’t like to fly if he can help it,” Cas said. “You can fly, I’m going to ride with him. I forgot to mention it, I’m sorry.”

Meg sighed, deeply, and Cas couldn't really begrudge her the irritation with him. “Okay, I guess I’ll fly out alone.”

“There’s a train from the airport to downtown, but the rink’s up in the suburbs, so I might as well come get you, Meg,” Donna said. “Oh, and Dean? If you’re driving?”

“Yeah?” Dean asked.

“I don’t care what Google Maps tells you to do, you avoid the 401 as much as you can. Avoid it like the plague,” she said, suddenly deadly serious. “Don’t do it.”

Dean laughed nervously, but thanked her kindly for the advice.

\----------  

Deciding on music for programs was a complex, often frustrating, and entirely necessary commitment that Cas had never really enjoyed. After all these years, he’d still yet to quite get the hang of distinguishing between a song he liked and a song that would make a good program, which wasn’t helped along by his music library consisting pretty much entirely of folk and moody alternative music too atmospheric to dance to, not driving enough.

One or the other usually made do in his singles career, with Anna’s input, of course, but with the infinitely more complex requirement for the short dance still confusing the living hell out of him, Cas figured he’d bow to Meg’s experience, at least where the short was concerned, and knew he should be open to compromise on the free, too.

With that in mind he’d flip flopped, in his mind, between bringing in Dean, as someone with good musical taste that balanced out his own, and desperately trying to convince Dean _not_ to come and, inevitably, turn the brainstorming session into a shouting match of epic proportions. He couldn't trust that one passive aggressive remark from Meg about Led Zeppelin wasn’t going to put Dean over the edge, pushing him from just barely tolerating the woman to throwing a tantrum.

But Dean was an adult, and Cas’ friend. If only a few days after their heart to heart, in which Cas had welcomed Dean into his professional and artistic life with open arms, Cas shut him out of such a key decision because he didn’t trust him, he’d be doing himself a true disservice.

Thought that didn’t mean he was going to passively sit back and hope for the best. That would just be idiotic.

“Try to remember, it’s just music,” Cas said, as they climbed the stairs to Meg’s apartment, carrying his laptop bag under his arm. “Creative differences happen. You wouldn’t believe how close Anna and I have come to murdering each other over these things, but it’ll pass.”

“Jeez, Cas, I’ll behave, alright?” Dean scoffed.

“Did you watch any of Meg and Azazel’s old programs?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, I know she’s not into the moody shit you like,” Dean said. “But you’re not into the pop shit she likes, and I’m here to back you up.”

“I’m thinking of suggesting she pick the short music, and I pick the free music,” Cas said. “A high energy short and a more emotionally driven free is usually a good play.”

“Fine,” Dean said. “But if she picks T Swizzle, we walk.”

“Don’t posture, Dean. Nobody who genuinely hates Taylor Swift calls her that, even in jest. You’re incredibly transparent.”

“Shit,” Dean breathed, letting himself smile at the jab, and Cas was awash with relief that he finally didn’t seem like he was walking into the discussion looking for a fight.  “Just don’t out me like that in there, okay?”

They reached the landing, strode down the hallway, and Cas could hear Dean take a deep, calming breath beside him as he knocked on the door.

Meg opened up promptly, and then immediately turned her back and returned to the living room without any greeting except a dismissive “there’s fresh coffee, if you want.”

“I’ll get it,” Dean said to Cas, and disappeared into the kitchen, letting the skaters set up their computers on Meg’s scratched, water ringed coffee table.

“You’re not bringing anything to the table?” Meg asked Dean, when he returned with two mugs, for himself and Castiel, and clearly had no laptop with him.

“Dean mostly listens to cassette tapes,” Cas explained.

“Really?” Meg asked, eyes lighting up as she laughed. “You know it’s not, like, 1992 anymore, right?”

Dean glared daggers at her, and Cas knew then, too late, that all the gentle, pre-emptive de-escalation in the world wouldn’t have prevented the oncoming war.

“What, I’m supposed to gut my priceless classic car, shove a CD player in her, and throw out perfectly good tapes? In the name of progress?” Dean scoffed. “Not fucking likely.”

“Have you ever even heard of an iPod?” Meg asked.

“I have Dean’s ideas in my iTunes library,” Cas said, quickly stepping in. “It’s all good classic rock. We’ll get to them.”

“Ooh, what is it? Elvis? The Beach Boys? Does he know anything that’s charted in this century?”

“You look at all those Prince programs from last season and tell me the classics aren’t worth anything” Dean said. “Prince programs including, don’t forget, those Canadians you’re so jealous of.”

“Wow! Low blow, Dean!” Meg said, forcing her ‘fuck you’ fake cheeriness. “You think of that zinger all by yourself?”

“If you’re both going to do this all day, I’ll turn over the music selection to Anna and none of us will get what we want,” Cas said, firmly. He had realized he’d need to be more forceful to stop this bickering, more commanding, and both Meg and Dean had the good decency to look a little humbled.

It didn’t take long, however, for Meg to bounce back. “I’m your partner, now,” she said, to Cas alone, as if Dean wasn't even in the room. Her voice was quieter, taking herself more seriously, even if she was digging in her heels just as stubbornly as before. “He’s not a skater, Castiel. He’s got no business being here in the first place.”

Dean was fuming, but must have had no comeback, because he kept his mouth shut. Technically, she wasn’t exactly wrong.

“Dean’s my friend, and without him I wouldn’t be here, and neither would you,” Cas said, before Dean had a chance to internalize Meg’s jab. “I’m well aware that you and I are a team, now, but Dean’s been on _my_ team since before you got here. His participation is something I won’t compromise on.”

Meg scoffed, but must have decided not to test Cas on the ultimatum, because she, too, went quiet.

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean said, fondly, but clearly a little smug at having been declared the winner.

“And you don’t have to take the bait every time,” Cas said, turning in his seat to look at Dean, who fell quickly back into humility. “Can we please continue, now?”

“Fine,” Meg said, dejected. “Whatever.”

“I’ve picked out some options for the free dance,” Cas said. “I have to admit that I still don't fully understand all the short dance requirements, and I’d rather you choose, Meg, as you’ve got the experience. If we co-ordinate the two programs to work together, even if they're musically different, I think we can come up with a workable compromise between our two styles.”

Meg considered for a moment. “I guess I’m fine with that. So long as the programs actually work together,” she said. “And so long as we still get veto power over the other. All due respect, a lot of your old programs wouldn’t suit me. Or, really, anybody but you.”

“I know that, and I’m open to discussion so long as you are,” Cas said. “Of course we’ll have to agree. We can’t skate well if one or the other of us truly hates the program.”

“I mean, it’s not a bad compromise,” Meg sighed. “Your sappy indie junk is more suited to the free, anyway.”

“So then, give me your thoughts for the short,” Cas said.

Meg sat up, readying herself to make a pitch. “Well, with Latin, you can go instrumental or you can go overdone,” Meg explained. “And for an at least not kind of boring variation on overdone, I was thinking Santana.”

Cas nodded absently, thinking it over, before turning to Dean and his relative expertise on the hits of the 70’s. It took Dean a minute to realize Cas was looking for his input.

“What?” Dean asked.

“I presume you know more about Santana than I do,” Cas said. He may have spotted Meg rolling her eyes in his peripheral vision, but chose to ignore it. “What do you think?”

Dean shrugged. “I don’t hate the idea,” he said, before turning to Meg. “But if you’re about to suggest Smooth, I’m out.”

“Oye Como Va,” Meg deadpanned, glaring daggers.

“Is that a rhumba?” Cas asked.

“It’s cha cha,” Meg said. “There’s five or six Latin rhythms you can choose from for the rhumba steps, and cha cha is on the list.”

Cas thought about it for a moment, before nodding to Meg. “Let’s hear it,” he said, and she tapped a few keys on her laptop and clicked the song.

They listened closely, considering the song, all peppy percussion and smooth electric guitar. The lyrics were almost irrelevant, just a single short verse in Spanish that repeated every so often. Lyrics were probably more of a distraction than anything, anyway. There was a reason lyrical music hadn’t been allowed outside of ice dance until a few years previous.

“I like it,” Cas said. “Can we try it out on the ice before committing?”

“Duh,” Meg said, but she seemed self satisfied that her selection hadn’t even been questioned.

The free was not nearly as easy to settle on.

Cas had not expected, of course, that they would agree instantly and easily. He knew he wasn’t the best at this, and that Meg’s tastes were different from his own. He could accept all of that graciously.

What rubbed him the wrong way was the way he could see it on Meg’s face when she hated something within a few measures of the intro, her nose scrunching up and a subtle twist touching her lips. In those moments, it absolutely felt like a judgement on himself, as much as he should have known better than to think it.

It seemed like acoustic guitar on principle turned her off. Brandi Carlile was off the list immediately, though Cas had been sure she at least bordered on mainstream country. The Shakey Graves duet was earmarked for potential exhibition material, but vetoed as a free program. The Bob Dylan cover hadn’t even stood a chance.

It wasn’t long before the unease in Cas’ chest grew and grew into something resembling hopelessness.

Not five songs in, Meg just seemingly gave up and groaned, flopping back into her chair. “Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. We’ll find something.”

“They aren’t that bad,” Dean said. “And I’m not hearing any bright ideas out of you.”

“We agreed, Dean. My short; fun, good. Your free,” Meg said, not taking her eyes off the ceiling. “It just has to _not_ be shit.”

“They’re not shit,” Cas said, furiously scrolling through his iTunes library for the next song from his handwritten list. God, he should have made a playlist. “They just aren’t right. Not yet.”

Meg sighed. “I’m gonna pee,” she said, bluntly, stood, and stalked out of the room.

“Dude,” Dean said, and while it sounded like he was going to continue whatever that thought had been, he just sputtered out and sighed without finding the words. The frustration of the music selection process must have been settling into him for the first time, like it had been set into Cas every single year since Anna became his coach and allowed him to choose his own music.

“We’ll find something,” Cas said, though in truth, something tight was forming in his chest. This wasn’t just his own program anymore, not just his choice. The pressure of finding something that wouldn't only work, but which Meg would like and agree upon, was adding an extra heavy layer of stress to the process. “Do you think… should we just let her choose?”

“ _Fuck_ , no,” Dean said. “Cas, buddy, you know what you’re doing. Meg’s got her area of expertise, but you’re the veteran, here. You’re a US champion. She’s an amateur next to you.”

“All competitive skaters are amateurs. That’s the point,” Cas corrected, still distracted by his laptop. “This is pretty basic terminology.”

“You know what I mean,” Dean said.

Cas looked up from the screen. “She doesn’t like anything I like.”

“She’s heard like four songs,” Dean said. “One of them was mine, and I’m the real amateur here.”

“Recreational skater,” Cas corrected.

“Whatever!”

Cas just sighed, deeply. His worry wasn’t eased. In spite of himself, he wanted Meg’s approval. He wanted her to enjoy the free as much as he wanted to enjoy it himself.

“Hey,” Dean said, and soothed Cas somewhat with a hand resting heavily on his shoulder. “What about the one with the uh, the British dude? The album art is like tarot cards or something?”

“Uh…” Cas had truly no idea by that description which song Dean was referring to. The couple dozen songs had melted together in his brain by the time he’d finished the preliminary list, and album art was a thoroughly unhelpful means of identification.

“The one I liked,” Dean said. “C’mon, my relatively mainstream musical taste, your experience seeing the skating in your head? We both liked that one. We talked about it.”

Dean liking it, a conversation they’d had, jogged his memory somewhat. Cas turned to the list, sliding his finger down the rough paper, and tapped a title, sliding it a few inches across the coffee table to show Dean. “This one?” He asked.

“Yeah!” Dean said. “Vessel!”

“It’s long,” Cas said. The time stamp he’d written next to the artist’s name was five minutes, twelve seconds, more than a full minute longer than the permitted time for the free dance.

Meg returned, then, but Dean just patted Cas’ shoulder and smiled at him, as reassuringly as he could manage. “Oye Como Va is long, too. If we can cut down Santana, we can cut down this one.”

“The variety and evolution of the sound is kind of the point, though,” Cas said.

“The variety in what?” Meg asked, sitting back down. “You got a good idea going? C’mon, play it for me.”

For only a moment, Castiel hesitated, still uncertain Meg would like it, but if Dean did, and so very much, how bad could it possibly be? How much could Meg possibly hate it? He tapped the title into the search bar and double clicked the title when it came up.

The song opened with a gentle picked tune on the electric guitar, and a man’s lightly accented voice sang the first verse, a series of opaque metaphors that evoked a reverent mood. Cas glanced up, watching Meg’s face carefully as the violin came in. She was deep in thought through the long instrumental between verses.

It was another minute before the chorus kicked in, the previously slow and gentle arrangements giving way to more energy and an almost bitter tone, in poetry full of religious symbolism. The music swelled, the guitar took on full chords, and Cas saw Meg’s eyes widen, like she’d been presented with something new and unexpected. He hoped it was a good kind of surprise.

When the music faded out at the end of the track, the two men waited on baited breath for the verdict. Meg nodded, slowly, thoughtfully.

“I don’t… no, I like it. I do like it,” she said, clearly unsure herself. “There’s.... Can I hear that again?”

Cas replayed the song for her, and another five minutes later, again waited patiently for her to process.

“It has good bones,” Meg said, finally. “The right beats where I can see the big elements going. The slower, moodier bits. It’s… it’s one you gotta think on, sure, but it’s one that we could do a lot with.”

Cas breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t pure praise, maybe, but at least it was positivity.

“Who’s it by?” Meg asked.

“Dry the River,” Cas said. “They’re not especially obscure, but they’re pretty…”

He trailed off. Before Cas could think of the right word, Dean stepped in. “Cas is a total hipster,” he said. “And they’re pretty obscure. But he listened to them before they were cool, right, buddy?”

Cas glanced over to Dean, intending to fix him with a warning look, but found Dean was smiling easily at him. It has just been a tease. Cas melted, a little, and could do nothing to keep from return the smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a few things I regret that I feel I do need to mention in passing - the first being the start of a complete and total lack of accuracy to ice dance because it took me some damn time to learn about all of this, I tell ya. So any ice dancers in the readership... I'm sorry.  
> Second being that I wrote this entire fic before the 2017/2018 skating season began and had no way of knowing that Virtue/Moir would end up using Oye Como Va in part for their short dance but I'm too stubborn to change it now, lol.  
> The third is that I met Rachel Miner partway through writing the second draft of this fic and it changed how I felt about Meg a lot, but it was too late for me to easily reimagine the character here. I've been repeatedly told by other fans that just because Rachel has a disability doesn't mean I'm required to give Meg a disability, but given that this is at heart a story about disability, the ableism that a character with Rachel's face spouts, by virtue of her role in this story as a sometimes-antagonist, doesn't sit well with me to go completely uncommented on. I wish I had the time to give Meg the subplot she deserved, here, but I didn't, so I'll just leave you with a nice reminder that Rachel Miner is a beautiful person and I sincerely wish her endless good days and self confidence.


	8. Chapter 8

The decision to take Dean’s car to Toronto was a given, a no-brainer, and they never even had to discuss it.

“I can drive for a while if you get tired,” Cas said, as he tossed his duffel and skate bag into the trunk. “Eight hours is a long day.”

“No way,” Dean laughed. “Sorry, dude, I don’t trust anybody with my baby. Not even Sam, usually. Not even you.”

“Trusting me to drive would still be better than you falling asleep at the wheel and putting us in a ditch in Nebraska,” Cas said.

“We aren’t even going through Nebraska, dumbass,” Dean said, only mocking Cas in as friendly a way as he could. “I promise, I’ve done longer trips under more stress, and with less sleep.”

Cas relented, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. Of all people, he trusted Dean to know what he was doing behind the wheel.

The Heartland was the Heartland, as always, as ever. After the traffic heavy slog to and through Kansas City, the buildings and suburbs gave way to farmland, and soon they were on a long, free flowing highway through the flats and hills of Missouri.

They pulled off the highway about 90 minutes into the drive for a quick stop off at a gas station, supposedly as a bathroom break, and to top up the Impala’s tank, if they were stopping anyway. Gas is cheaper in the country, Dean argued. Cas guessed, however, that the stop was more because Dean got a kick out of roaming the gas station snack aisles. He came to the checkout counter with arms full of jerky and chips and cold drink cans and individually wrapped processed sugar masquerading as baked goods. Cas’ stomach turned a little, and he couldn’t keep a vague look of awe and terror off his face as the cashier rang up the snacks and added it to the total from the pump.

“You gotta eat junk, Cas,” Dean explained, as Castiel sifted through the contents of the thin plastic bag, and Dean steered them back onto the highway. “It’s a road trip.”

“You can get all of this at any 7/11 back home,” Cas said. “This is all salt and sugar. It’s like the grocery shopping of an unattended toddler - and I say that having grown up with Gabriel.”

“Sure, but isn’t it just, like, an experience?” Dean asked. “Windows down, radio up, nothing to do but watch the country fly by and stuff your face with junk food? Jerky and Twinkies basically taste like gas stations.”

“I don’t think that sounds as appetizing as you think it does,” Cas said, but fished out the bag of jerky anyway, and after a glance at the nutritional information printed on the package, decided to do his best to simply not think too hard about it. At least it was protein. Technically.

“So what, there’s no nostalgia in it for you?” Dean asked. “You’ve never been on a road trip?”

“Anywhere further from Pontiac than Chicago, we flew,” Cas explained. “I drove a rented cargo van to Detroit, then to Lawrence, when I moved, but I’ve never really gone driving for recreation.”

“Well then, I guess we’re just gonna have to fix that,” Dean said, with an easy smile. “If you don’t hate being in a car with me after this trip, at least.”

Cas found himself smiling, too, as he bit into a strip of jerky. Two hours down, fourteen to go, wasn’t a great place to start making commitments, but being Dean’s co-pilot, so to speak, was pleasant. The conversation was as good as it had ever been with Dean, and driving gave them a chance to take in the postcard perfect scenic view of America.

There was also something comforting about how much Dean was in his element on the road. Cas didn’t need to navigate, read any maps, or whip out his phone to use the GPS. Dean gave the impression that he knew every freeway, highway, and back road in the country like the back of his hand. He had anecdotes come to mind at half the towns they passed through, and as they drove further and further from home, Cas felt like Dean made sure that his comfort zone came right along with them.

They crossed the Mississippi into Illinois in the middle of the afternoon. In spite of himself, Cas found the increasingly familiar scenery as they neared Pontiac more stressful than pleasant, but found himself relaxing again as soon as they passed exit 201 and kept sailing forth towards Chicago.

“Do you want to stop on this side of the city for the night, or do you want to get into Indiana?” Dean asked, when they were about an hour out. “Do you have a preference?”

“I figured we would just stop in Chicago itself,” Cas said.

“We could, I guess. It’ll just save a few bucks to find a mom and pop motel in the boonies instead of a Holiday Inn or something in town.”

“I can afford it, if it’s more convenient, but I’m fine with either.”

“Hey, you gotta start saving your cash, Cas. Who knows if you’ll ever see any more of that prize money,” Dean joked. “Anyways, I guess whatever’s fine. It’s just the way I’ve always done it.”

“One of us has to make a decision,” Cas said.

“Then you do it,” Dean replied.

Cas thought about it, tried to consider what it would be like trying to get out of Chicago in the morning, and what he himself might feel most comfortable with. “I trust your choice,” he said. “Let’s get through the city, though. It’ll save us fighting too much traffic tomorrow.”

It would also keep him from having to see too much of Chicago in the daylight, but Dean didn’t need to know the complexity of his feelings towards seemingly the entire state of Illinois.

“Good thinking,” Dean said, and drove on.

They stopped for the night at a dingy motel in a town along the shore of Lake Michigan. The room was sparse, and the wallpaper peeling, and the plastic bathtub stained, but it was clean, cheap, and bedbug-free, supposedly. It would serve well enough for a few hours of shut eye before they hit the road again in the morning.

Dean had been ready to keep driving, Cas knew. The man looked like he’d never tire of sitting behind the wheel of that car and staring out at the highway, like he was born to it. Cas was almost ready to let him drive all night, too, if that was what he wanted, but Cas wasn’t sure he himself wouldn’t regret spending all night trying to sleep with only his jacket as a pillow, and an ever increasing pressure building in his bad knee, which ached more the longer he kept it bent in one position.

They checked into the motel around nine in the evening, and then found a scrappy, locally owned little diner to sit in and grab something to eat before they would pass out for the night. Sitting in the booth, Cas knew he was going to suffer with it if he didn’t slather his knee in pain cream and wrap the joint as soon as they got back to the room.

“You alright?” Dean asked, noticing Cas’ wince as he adjusted his position in the seat.

“I’ll be fine,” Cas said. “The ankle’s the real risk, but the knee complains a lot more. It’s alright, it just hurts.”

“I think hurting is kind of the definition of not alright, Cas,” Dean said.

“Considering everything this leg has been through, it’s close enough for me.”

“Suit yourself,” Dean sighed, picking at his fries, his burger long since eaten. “But if you need to stretch your legs, you can just tell me, you know. I can pull into a rest station or something.”

“I don’t know, you seem like the sort of road trip captain who hates people who need to pee too often, let alone stop just to take a walk,” Cas said, hoping Dean took it as the gentle tease it was.

“Well, you’re special, then, aren’t you?” Dean said, with the same teasing tone, but didn’t meet Cas’ eye.

“Well, thank you,” Cas replied, more softly than he’d intended.

“But seriously,” Dean said. “I know not everybody can stand being on the road as long as I can. If you need a break, just ask.”

“Where did you even get this kind of tolerance?” Cas asked. “Do you have some secret past as a long haul trucker I don’t know about?”

“Nah, just the way we grew up,” Dean said. “We were born in Lawrence, and we kept coming back, but sometimes dad would move us out of state on some whim and we’d wander around for a while. When we were kids, it always felt really cool, y’know? We’d leave school and camp out in the car, and then we’d stay in motels for a few weeks, go to a new school, maybe. Until dad decided his new job wherever wasn’t worth it anymore, and we’d pack up, go back to Kansas, and dad would go back to Bobby’s shop.”

Cas tried to smile politely, but couldn’t help to concern that furrowed his brow. For his light, almost nostalgic tone, it didn’t take a genius to realize Dean’s description hinted at a turbulent childhood, at the very least, if not neglect and a severely interrupted education. Dean must have noticed his reaction, and offered Cas a resigned little laugh.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “I know. But it seemed cool at the time.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pass judgement,” Cas said.

“No, dude, it was pretty fucked up,” Dean admitted. “Dad was… he just wasn’t right. He was doing his best.”

“Why did--” Cas cut himself off, considering the most respectful way to ask. “If I may, why didn’t he want to stay in Lawrence?”

“He, uh,” Dean paused to take a deep breath before continuing. “So my mom died when I was really young. There was a fire, and it was just one of those freak accidents that just… they just happen, right?”

“Oh,” Cas breathed. “I’m so sorry, Dean.”

Dean screwed up his face, a little, almost seeming distracted, and didn’t acknowledge Cas’ sympathies before continuing, though Cas really couldn’t begrudge him the desire to just push through a painful story.

“Sometimes shitty things happen and they don’t mean anything, but sometimes it’s really hard for people to deal with just how little the big stuff means, because they want life to make sense,” he explained. “Dad just wanted it to make sense. He wasn’t, like hallucinating or anything, he just had to believe there was something, someone, he could take revenge on, or protect us from. So he’d go off on his own little investigations of similar fires, all over the country. He’d bother local police. He’d convince himself we weren’t safe in Lawrence anymore. Fire marshall told him a million times that there was no way it was arson, but he never got it through his skull.”

“That must have been terrifying for you and Sam,” Cas said. No child should have to go through that, he wanted to continue, but he got the sense that Dean knew that already.

Dean sighed, and gazed absently out the diner window. “I don’t know. Hell, half the time, dad probably just took us away because he got in some fight with Bobby and forgot the old man was doing him a goddamn favour keeping him employed,” he said. “He gave up, eventually, but he kind of hated himself for it, and it all came off the rails after that. I started working, especially when Sam went to Palo Alto and his coaching fees were so damn high. We couldn’t be living hand to mouth at that point, you know?”

Cas nodded, though he doubted Dean noticed.

“But then he started winning shit,” Dean said, a smile finally crossing his face again, and Castiel was reminded of how fiercely proud Dean was of his brother. “Real shit, with prize money, and invitations to do ice shows. Dad uh... well, he wasn't around too much longer after that, and I’d had a falling out with Bobby over something stupid, so there was no reason for me to stay in Lawrence, and I got back on the road, because who really gives a shit, right?”

“It made you happy?” Cas asked. “To travel?”

“I don’t know,” Dean said, with a shrug. “It made me think a lot less. I could just get on the highway and zone out, or drink too much where nobody could judge me. For a long time, I think that’s the closest I got.”

Cas watched Dean, who himself was still watching the cars passing through the darkness outside. He hadn't looked at Cas once through the entire story, and Cas didn’t know what to say. He had no idea how to acknowledge that kind of pain, or the trust to must have taken for Dean to admit to it so freely, or how glad he was that Dean was doing better, now.

“Thank you,” Cas said, at last. It was all he could think to say. “For telling me. I know it’s very personal.”

Dean turned back to Cas, smiling at him, though it was a smile that Cas felt he could almost see the cracks in. “You already told me your tragic backstory,” he said. “It’s only fair you get mine.”

“No, you didn’t have to,” Cas said, insisted. “And you didn’t have to talk about your feelings--”

“Oh my God, Cas,” Dean laughed, nervously, flopping back into the padded booth seat. “Don’t make this some chick flick heart to heart moment, okay? Bad stuff happens. I wanted to tell you about it because you’re my friend.”

“I just appreciate the trust you placed in me, Dean,” Cas said. “That’s all.”

Conspicuously ignoring Cas’ vain attempts to continue talking about their icky, girly feelings, Dean instead leaned back in the booth and craned his neck around to look to the counter and the little case of baked goods behind it. “What kind of pie do you think they have?” He asked, and Cas wasn’t sure if Dean was speaking to him, or just asking the question of the universe in general.

“Doesn’t everybody have apple?” Cas suggested.

Dean ordered two slices, Cas ate his own slowly, barely hungry and too distracted to truly taste it, and he thought long and hard about how he couldn't decide if the conversation had really been a step forward, or a step back.

 ---------- 

Sleeping in a motel room, with Dean in the next bed, was nothing like the last time they’d fallen asleep together. For one, there was the distance between them that they hadn’t ensured that time on Cas’ sofa, the gap between the stiff beds being far more than the required foot or two to keep things strictly platonic. For two, of course, they hadn’t been drinking, and hadn’t just passed out from exhaustion five hours into a Netflix binge, and Cas was treated to the slow passage of time, in the quiet and the dark, in acute awareness of Dean.

Just his presence, yes, but also the little noises and sighs as he settled in for bed, when he shifted first as he fell into sleep, and later, Cas assumed, in his sleep. He himself couldn't seem to drift off between the distractions and his own overactive mind. Maybe motels - or hotels, hostels, guest bedrooms, whatever - just caused him that kind of hypersensitivity, or maybe he’d just spent a day without exerting much energy and was still restless. None of these explanations held any water, what with how many hotels he’d slept peacefully in over his lifetime, and how easily he could sleep 12 hours a day at home, but they were better excuses than anything else he could think up.

Dean’s confession, his ‘tragic backstory’ as he put it, rolled over and over again in Cas’ too busy mind, like he was trying to figure out a rubik’s cube. It wasn’t his puzzle to solve, he knew, but it felt like a new facet to Dean, something complicated that he had shared so willingly, and something Cas was compelled simply to understand, even if he could never fix it. What could Cas do if not try to empathize with his best friend’s oldest heartbreak?

But what, on the other hand, could Cas achieve by rewinding, over and over, the increasingly distorted memory of that conversation, but worry about Dean’s wellbeing? His willingness to sacrifice for others, including those who perhaps didn’t deserve so much of him?

The more he came to know Dean, the more Cas knew he couldn’t ask any more than Dean had already offered. Dean would give and give until he was empty, for the right person, and if they let him. What right did Cas have to ask for any more than he’d already taken?

 ---------- 

In the morning, bundled back into the cabin of Dean’s Impala, well rested and well fed with coffee and sub-par bagels, Dean and Cas tackled the last eight hours of the trip. They crossed Southern Michigan, smiled tightly at the Canadian border patrol officers in the needlessly nervous way, and ordered lunch off the all day breakfast menu at an almost aggressively rustic restaurant in Windsor while Dean grumbled that the colourful Canadian bills were just the wrong texture.

The highway 401 Donna had mentioned was, in fact, the only practical way to get from the border crossing in Windsor to Toronto, and despite her warnings, it moved fairly well for the first two and a half hours after they got onto it. With little warning, however, as they approached the city, it became bumper to bumper traffic, and it took another two hours to shuffle the rest of their way past the suburbs, past the outskirts, and into the corner of town in which they were meant to be setting up camp for the next few days.

There were plans to meet Donna for introductions over dinner, and fortunately, they made it to their featureless chain hotel in North York in time to shower and change clothes before heading back out - a blessing after two days in the hot metal box that a classic car becomes in late July. Donna would be meeting them at the restaurant, having picked up Meg from the airport, and with the ice broken, the team would all pick up bright and early the next morning at the rink, to get to work on the nuts and bolts of the program choreography.

Dean gritted his teeth as he maneuvered into the obnoxiously small parking space in the little restaurant’s obnoxiously small parking lot. Cas had to hold the passenger side door halfway closed as he shuffled out to keep it from denting the side of the next car over, and slide carefully along the body of the Impala to escape from between the two vehicles.

They hadn’t been inside fifteen whole seconds before they were spotted by a sunny blonde sitting near the back of the restaurant, who waved them over to her big table. Donna’s personality shone through even more instantaneously in person than it had over the phone, and that sure was saying something. It was a few seconds before Cas even noticed Meg sitting at the table with her, and the third woman who was apparently joining them.

“Castiel! Dean! Good to finally meet ya both,” Donna called, as Dean and Cas approached the table, standing to meet them halfway and wrap them each, in turn, in a friendly bear hug. “How was the drive out?”

“It was fine, thank you,” Cas said.

“You were right about that, uh, four hundred and one highway,” Dean said, with a subtle chuckle in his voice.

“Ooh.” Donna winced in sympathy. “You got stuck on there after all, eh?”

“In rush hour, seemed like,” Dean said.

Donna managed to wince even harder, and the two launched into a discussion on local traffic patterns that sounded like it would become painfully dull any second, so Cas took it as a chance to turn around and greet Meg.

“How was your flight?” He asked.

“Fine,” Meg said. “How was your two days with Kerouac over here? You holding up?”

“It was nice, actually,” Cas said, earnestly. “It was fun.”

Meg, honest to God, rolled her eyes at that, brushing him off, but Cas was used to her enough that he wasn’t terribly offended.

“This is Jody,” Donna said, interrupting small talk to introduce the woman who had accompanied her. Jody was a worldly looking woman, with short cropped brown hair and a friendly, if reserved, smile. “She’s my partner, and she’ll be helping me show you the program tomorrow, so I figured you all oughtta meet her tonight, too.”

“Hi,” Jody said, with a little wave, though she didn’t stand. “Good to see some Americans coming around every now and then. You’d be surprised how rare we seem to be up here.”

“Oh, are you one of us?” Dean asked, sitting down, and Cas followed suit, Donna also settling back down. “From where abouts?”

“South Dakota. I lived in Sioux Falls before I jumped ship for this one,” Jody said, jabbing a thumb at Donna. “Can’t say the White House is letting me regret it too much these days, but it’s still kinda home, right?”

“Is there much of a skating culture in Sioux Falls?” Cas asked.

“I only came to skating through Donna, not the other way around,” Jody said. “I played hockey, sure, but she’d have dragged me kicking and screaming into it if she’d had to. So now I skate.” Jody shrugged, but shot a fond smile at the woman beside her, and it was clear she didn’t mind. There was something in the way her eyes lingered on Donna, and the glance between them as they smiled at one another.

“Oh,” Dean said, and from his tone, Cas figured that he and Dean had just had the exact same epiphany. “If you don’t mind me asking, when you say partners…”

“In which sense of the word?” Donna asked, grin impossibly widening. “Depends on the day, doesn’t it, Jodes?”

Jody restrained herself to a mild eye roll at the weak attempt at humor. “We skate together most days,” she said. “We’re married every day.”

“Oh,” Cas said, simply. He felt that pull, that instinctive desire to out himself in the presence of a happy same sex couple he could relate to, to share that recognition of self, and they, in fairness, would almost definitely understand the struggle well enough not to out him to other skaters. He was kept in check, however, but the knowledge that he couldn’t put the same trust in every person currently at the table. He liked Meg, sure - he wasn’t quite ready to trust her with a secret that could destabilize his already crumbling career.

“That’s cool,” Dean said, with a warm smile, letting the women know on behalf of the group that they were all comfortable. Not that it _should_ be needed, but in the world they lived in, it was sadly still not a given. Dean didn’t elaborate, either with regards to his own bisexuality, nor on Cas’ behalf.

“Are all three of you from Kansas?” Jody asked, bringing the conversation back to where they’d began, and waggling her fingers between the three other Americans at the table.

“Dean is,” Meg said. “I’m from Seattle. Cas is from Chicago.”

“Near Chicago,” Cas corrected. “It’s actually Pontiac.”

“Castiel is Anna Novak’s little brother,” Donna explained to her wife. “You remember I told you about Anna? From Vancouver?”

Jody had to think about it for a moment, but the recognition dawned on her and her eyes went wide in what could almost be mistaken for fear. “You mean _Anna_ , from _that one time_ in Vancouver?” She asked. “Olympic Village Anna?”

“Yessiree,” Donna said, breaking out into an even wider grin than her usual perma-plastered cheery smile. She turned to Cas. “Your sister and I got into a mite of trouble back in our heyday, you know. The stories she could tell you, my gosh…”

“I was there,” Cas said, brows furrowing in concentration. “I was just tagging along with Anna, but I was there in 2010. There was so much going on at the time, I’m sorry, but I don’t remember meeting you.”

“What’d you have been?” Donna asked. “Sixteen? Seventeen? They wouldn't have let you into the big parties or the bars, would they?”

Cas flushed a little, flashing back to bars across the metro Vancouver area where walking in with ten or twelve athletic adults in their Team USA jackets had shielded him from being asked for ID at the door. “I was there,” he said.

“Ooh, Cas, you rebel!” Dean teased, gently kicking Cas’ foot under the table.

“Well, you kind of remember two nights after the ice dance wrapped up? And your whole team came into that bar on West Second Street? And the Canadians were already a few rounds in, because Scott and Tessa just brought us gold on home ice?”

Meg perked up. Jody, whose face had slowly but surely taken on a look of dread, put a hand gently on her wife’s arm.

“You sure this is the time and place for this story, babe?” Jody asked.

“Oh, shoot, Jodes. It’s a good story! And Castiel’s sister is in it, he’ll want to hear it!” Donna pleaded, unfazed, and promptly went headlong back into the narrative. “It was that night, Castiel. You remember that?”

Cas didn’t, not really, but nodded his head anyway so that she would continue. Jody conspicuously drained her wine glass.

“Anywho, I was drunk as a skunk by midnight, because I was never that much of a drinker, but what the heck, right? It was my only Olympics, I wasn’t gonna go home until I’d beaten that Tessa Virtue at something, even if it was gonna be drinking her under the table. And I don’t know where I got this idea, but I had these, uh… you know the little scissors they put in travel sewing kits? Itty bitty ones?”

Meg gasped, suddenly, and all eyes at the table turned to her. She was staring wide eyed at Donna, in awe, and after collecting herself, asked quietly, like she was whispering a secret, “are you the girl who tried to cut Moir’s hair off in the men’s room?”

Donna laughed, hard and loud, slapping the table once and looking for all the world like this story had been the proudest moment of her damn life. “You bet I am!” She shouted, and within moments, she and Meg were both laughing hysterically.

Cas, too stunned by the revelation to react properly, looked over the Dean and found that the other man was turned away, a fist over his mouth, eyes squeezed tight as he desperately tried to keep his composure. Back on the other side of the table, Jody had adopted a thousand yard stare, disassociating herself from the spectacle around her.

“You didn’t!” Meg cried.

“I did!” Donna replied, before turning back to Cas. “And I wouldn’t have gotten away with it if your big sister didn’t take those damn things off me and start trying to bluff Virtue out of gettin’ into a real fight with me on her partner’s behalf!”

“Oh my God,” Dean said, still stifling his laughter.

“And then Anna held her hair while she threw up all night, and this is Donna’s favourite Olympic story, and somehow, no matter how many times she tells it, it’s never hit the press,” Jody said, smiling tiredly, but fondly.

“Oh, Jody-O,” Donna cooed. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again - that’s still gotta be the tamest thing that happened in that one bar on that one night. Those Olympic Villages get a heck of a lot wilder than that. Right, Castiel?”

Jody turned her eyes to Cas, and though he didn’t want to inconvenient the poor woman by encouraging Donna anymore, she wasn’t wrong. “I suppose so,” he said. “I attended two as Anna's guest and one on my own merits, and that has been my experience, yes.”

Jody sighed, picked up her wine glass again, and seemed quite disappointed to find it empty. She casually swapped it for Donna’s, and started in on that second glass of Cabernet.

Meg looked at Donna like she hung the moon.

Cas certainly couldn't say there would be any awkwardness left between them all by tomorrow.

\---------- 

Dean and Cas drove Meg back to the hotel where the three of them were staying, and bid her goodnight in the lobby. Cas hadn’t really questioned the decision for the two men to stay in the same room, apart from Meg, because it just seemed obvious to segregate the team by gender. He realized, more and more, however, that the classification of ‘us’ - Dean and Cas - against ‘them’ - including, but not limited to, Meg - was automatic. It had less to do with gender than the fact that Cas considered Dean to be in the innermost of the inner circles of ‘people who will help him skate again’ even though, as his partner, he knew, Meg should have some kind of priority.

But instead, there was Dean. First on his team, most unflinchingly, consistently on his team, on and off the ice. And for what? What did Dean get out of this? They’d come such a long way since Dean first dragged Cas to the engagement party on Sam’s behalf.

“What I don’t get is how you can be at a party like that and not remember,” Dean said, as they were getting ready for bed.

“Sam’s never qualified for the Olympics, right?” Cas asked, plugging in his phone. “You’ve never been?”

“2018’s going to be our first,” Dean said.

“PyeongChang is going to be the worst three weeks of your liver’s life,” Cas deadpanned.

“Oh, come on,” Dean scoffed. “Like Donna said, you were sixteen. How drunk could you have gotten?”

“One, I was almost eighteen. Two, I was 21 in Sochi, and I’m convinced the only way half of us even survived that infrastructure was ill advised vodka binges,” Cas said. “And third, in Vancouver, I had little to no tolerance and the older skaters kept buying me drinks because I couldn’t buy my own. And four--”

“Jesus, Cas, I didn't ask you for a damn essay about it,” Dean asked.

“ _Four_ ,” Cas repeated, insisting. “Hanging out with the national team meant hanging out with Johnny Weir, and when you’re seventeen and gay and also it’s 2010, Johnny Weir is a real American hero. I was distracted.”

“Aw, you had a crush?” Dean teased.

“No,” Cas said, and thought about it for a moment. “I did kind of live vicariously through his friendship with Stephane Lambiel, though. That was a crush. And you need to promise me you’re taking that secret to your grave.”

“Cross my heart,” Dean joked, and flopped down onto his bed. “That’s fair, though. Lambiel is hot.”

“Did you ever crush on any skaters?” Cas asked. “When you were younger, and maybe we seemed a little older, as a group, instead of everybody being high schoolers?”

“Pfft, you that bitter about Chen?” Dean asked through a chuckle. “You're so mad a 17 year old is that good? Do you want to cut his hair off in a dingy bar bathroom?”

“You know I’m not,” Cas said, knowing it was only a joke, but still feeling defensive.

“I’m just yanking your chain, Cas,” Dean said, softly. “I don’t know. The girls have always been that young, haven’t they? It always seemed that way.”

“And the boys?”

Dean was quiet for a few moments, staring up at the ceiling, before he spoke. “I kind of bottled that part of me up for a long time,” he said, soberly.

Cas watched Dean’s profile in the yellow light from the bedside lamps, a form lying prone on the still made bed, gossiping with him about crushes like they were kids at a slumber party, and in a way, Cas supposed, that wasn’t so far from the truth.

“When did you--” Cas started to ask, but cut himself off. He wasn’t even sure what it was he wanted to ask, and didn’t know where Dean’s boundaries would be if he did.

“After my dad died,” Dean offered, without Cas having to give the question voice. “It wasn’t really healthy, for a while, but now it is. I think so, anyway.”

The room was silent for a minute, except for their quiet breathing. Cas wanted to hear Dean’s story, more than he’d wanted to hear Donna and Jody’s, and to find that mirror in himself, but didn’t dare push Dean any further, afraid the delicate connection being spun between them was liable to snap at any second.

“You?” Dean asked, all surety, all confidence having fallen from his voice, replaced with a naked vulnerability. A trust fall met with a request for the same faith.

“They just kind of happened,” Cas said. “I’ve dated three men. Mostly they were mistakes, really short relationships.”

Dean huffed a little laugh, sad, and not unkind. “Tell me about it,” he said. “You go your whole life thinking what you want is kind of wrong and then you’re expected to fall in love with your soulmate right out of the gate. And if you don’t, it’s just proof that your love is fake.”

“I don’t know if I’ve ever been in love,” Cas admitted. “I don’t think I know what it feels like. I get confused.”

He let the words hang in the air between them. He’d stopped watching Dean, and for all he knew, Dean was not looking at him. They were spitting confessions into the darkened room, a neutral space for facts Cas knew Dean hadn’t yet found a place to be comfortable with, either, too long spent unlearning shame, and not yet enough time spent finding the love to heal it.

But maybe just the speaking and listening… maybe that was a step.

“I though love with men was supposed to feel different from love with women,” Dean said, slowly, like he had to feel out the words as he spoke. “I figured love wasn’t supposed to matter to dudes, so I thought it was normal when I didn’t feel anything for them.”

“Do you think you know it now?” Cas asked. “How to find it? How it’s supposed to be?”

“I don’t think it’s supposed to be like anything, and I don’t think you can go looking for it,” Dean said. “I don’t think there are rules like that. But do think I’ll know it when I see it.”

Cas smiled to himself. In his small way, he was proud of Dean.

“What about you?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know,” Cas said, tried to think of a way to elaborate, and came up empty. He felt the smile dash from his face. There was still so much of his heart he couldn’t trust, so much of life that continued to evade him, that might always. He faced the fear that he might not know it when he saw it. That he might die alone having felt nothing but rushes of dopamine, quick fading childish infatuation, and sparks of lust that barely lasted the night. Adrift in the darkness - with Dean, without Dean, all at once - he had no answer to give.

 ---------- 

The Toronto Cricket, Skating, and Curling Club was furnished with a beautiful rink, decorated all in a classic, rustic style, in a quiet, upscale corner of the city. That rink had seen Olympians and world champions, hosted the best in the world, and probably seen history made.

If Dean or Meg had come to Toronto looking to rub shoulders with champions, however, they were shit out of luck. With their poor odds at success, of course none of the country’s skating elite would have even returned their calls, and instead, they would be working out of a squat, brown brick building near the city limits in Willowdale, a cavernous, echoing arena with hockey markings on the ice and a snack bar by the changing rooms.

“It’s nothing too fancy," Donna told them that morning, as she led the visitors inside and flipped on the lights. “But it’s close to home, and as long as we work around public skate time and peewee hockey practice, it’s all ours.”

“It’s not so shabby,” Dean said, and there was a faint smile on his face as he looked around the arena. “Y’know, this is almost just like where Sammy started out.”

“Oh yeah?” Donna asked.

“Yeah,” Dean said, and turned to Cas. “You know that dinky little place with the arcade just off the highway? Closer to Topeka?”

“Yes,” Cas said. “I mean, no, but I’ve driven past it. I’m aware of it.”

“Dad scraped together some pocket change every other week in the winter to send us out to the public skate on the bus,” Dean explained. “I guess he thought we’d get into hockey, stay outta any real trouble - like good Midwestern boys, y'know? Sam would see some girls, now and then, doing these really simple spins and things, and thank God he was still young enough that he didn’t flinch away from girly stuff, because he just fell in love with it. Really wanted to learn how. So I signed him up for the class, put my hockey money towards it, and just watched from the bleachers.”

It was clearly such a happy memory for Dean, his face having gone soft with nostalgia.

“You gave up your own chances for him,” Cas said.

Dean laughed to himself. “Yeah. Dad didn’t like it, but it was worth it,” he said. “Old man didn’t even figure it out for like, two years. And even then only because he took us out on some lake in fucking Wyoming and realized I could barely stand on the ice.”

“Aw, honey, I’m sorry you had to do that, but it’s sweet that you did,” Donna said. “I guess it paid off though, eh? And you skate pretty good now, I hear.”

“Yeah, I’m alright,” Dean said, ducking his head, not too humble to brag about Sam, sure, but far too shy about his own abilities.

“He’s good,” Cas interrupted, not about to let Dean to put himself down, even silently. “He’s suited to ice dance, and he was an excellent stand in before Meg arrived.”

“Good for a civilian, maybe,” Dean said, rushing to qualify the compliment. “Recreational skater. Whatever.”

“99% of everybody’s recreational, Dean,” Jody said. “An Olympian gives you a compliment like that, it’s really nothing to sneeze at.”

Cas, in his own turn, flushed a little, largely for the same reasons that he’d bet had humbled Dean a moment before - a powerful, if maybe less than rational, aversion to undeserved praise, as if accepting the compliment would make him seem stupid, or arrogant. Olympian, technically, yes. But having spent time around Olympians most of his life, that didn’t feel like a title that should give him any kind of validation or authority. Maybe having a US champion brother (and soon, sister-in-law), plus a dozen or so friend competing at a high level, gave Dean the same distrust of his own skills.

Of the five people present, Dean was the only one who didn’t lace up. The nagging disappointment was back, then, for Cas. He was getting used to Meg, growing respectful of her, maybe even fond, but the little reminders that skating with Dean was no longer a luxury he could justify still stung.

Meg hopped up onto the barrier, the blunt back points of her blades tapping rhythms on the fiberglass as she absently swung her legs back and forth. Cas took his place beside her, leaning on the boards, though, unlike Meg, he stood on the ice, while Donna and Jody discussed something, words just too low to make out, near the center of the rink.

Cas couldn’t help a hyperawareness of Dean, just over his right shoulder, leaning on the barrier from the opposite side.

Stupid distractions. Stupid unbalanced brain.

“Alrighty!” Donna chirped, shattering that train of thought. “Focus up, kiddos! Let’s say we go over this once quick, give you a sense, and then we’ll take it step by step, alright? Short program first. No real lifts in in our demo, of course, those are highly technical and you oughtta pick 'em out for yourself. That work for everybody?”

“Of course,” Cas said, at the same time as Meg made a nonverbal ‘uh-huh’ noise.

“I’ll be doing the holding, half lifting stuff, on account of my wife being a waif,” Donna added with a flashed smile to Jody, knowing, like it was an inside joke. She then gestured with one finger between herself and Cas. “So you just keep your eyes on me, alright, Castiel?”

Cas returned her smile in acknowledgement, and without further ado, Jody and Donna slid into a starting pose, Jody hanging off of Donna’s shoulder as Donna stood fully upright. The first, introductory twangs of the electric guitar poured from the rink’s fuzzy sound system and into the echoing void of the arena.

In that first instant, when they stopped waiting and started performing, a look passed between Jody and Donna, a little spark that struck the match of Donna’s barely faded permasmile, and made Jody raise her eyebrows just once, a little tease, and in that one instant, Cas trusted the program entirely.

Whatever Donna had built for them, however she skated it, the dance would, Cas was sure, be built on and laced with a real, palpable, love, and there has never been a better foundation than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter has a few images and feelings from my current young adulthood in downtown Toronto, but this chapter just so happens to contain places from my childhood growing up in Willowdale, on the North end of the city. If you ever wanted to visit, the restaurant is unquestionably Paisano's, at York Mills and Don Mills, and while it's not necessarily actually the same rink, the nameless local rink is based on my memories of learning to skate at a rink on Bayview Avenue. I had thought about setting the scene in the big fancy rink where Brian Orser works, and which I have visited before (or rather, I've visited the curling rink in the same building) but this just felt more... right... for Cas and Dean. :)


	9. Chapter 9

Three days of learning, and practicing, and ironing out the programs, three days of eat-sleep-skate, and all of sudden, it was enough to go home with. They were finished at the rink, and with heartfelt thank yous and goodbyes and promises to keep in touch with Jody and Donna, the three of them were released, like kids from school, back into the real world.

And with the night still being young and all, and Meg’s flight home not being until about noon the following day, well… who could begrudge them a night out?

Well, Dean could begrudge _Meg_ the night out. Exhaustingly, Cas found, Dean could begrudge Meg just about anything.

He’d been all but sulking at their corner table for most of the evening, but Cas had to admit that he didn’t much mind keeping Dean company there. The bar was loud, dimly lit, and crowded, and there was a nagging spark of irrational fear that if he left the table, let Dean out of his sight, the little oasis of their table would melt into the throng and he wouldn’t be able to find it again, even if he was able to shoulder his way through the densely packed room.

Fortunately, they’d been able to convince Meg to bring them rounds from the bar whenever she came back to the table to check on them, provided they paid for her drinks, too, and babysat her purse. Dean had protested on both points, but Cas had been just tired and stressed out enough to be willing, and handed over his credit card, instantly uneasy at the overjoyed look on Meg’s face. He just sat down, shut up, and quietly prayed she wasn’t planning on putting him into any serious debt tonight.

“Oh my God,” Meg laughed, as she came back over to their table to drop off the latest round of local craft beers that Dean had been sulking extra hard to pretend he wasn’t enjoying. “You can really tell that you two don’t do bars, can’t you? You look like you’d rather be at a funeral, Dean.”

“Oh, I like bars,” Dean said, probably aiming for deadpan humour, but missing it by a mile if only because of the shouting required to be heard above the music and chatter. “Hell, I _love_ bars. But I also really like being able to hear myself fucking think.”

“Oh, honey, there cannot be that much going on in your melon worth hearing, trust me.”

Dean forced a fake, sarcastic laugh before sneering at her. “C’mon, you can do better than that,” he spat. “How much fucking longer have we got to hang around here, Masters?”

“I’m not going back to Hicksville without one good night on the town,” Meg said. “Yeah, I’m gonna be a while.”

“Lawrence isn’t--” Dean cut himself off. “Sorry it’s not Seattle, or whatever the fuck overcrowded shithole you’re used to, princess.”

“ _Children,_ ” Cas said sternly, cutting off their bickering. He didn’t feel great about condescending to them both like that, but from the way both Dean and Meg’s expressions shifted from fiery to self-conscious, they both at least recognized, when it was pointed out to them, how petty they were being in the first place. Not that Cas expected the humility would last for long with those two.

“You don’t have to stay, you know,” Meg said.

“Really?” Cas asked. “Do you have a safe way home if we go?”

“You know the subway shuts down at like one, right?” Dean asked.

“Yeah,” Meg said. “And they’ve got Uber in Canada, dumbass.”

Cas felt Dean tense next to him, the truce having lasted an ever shorter time than Cas had imagined it would, but he calmed Dean and kept him in check with a grounding hand on his knee, under the table.

“You’re sure you’ll be safe?” Cas asked again.

“I’m not some freshman on her first night out, Cas,” Meg said. “I’m a big girl. Promise.”

Dean was already on his feet, either eager to flee from the bar or just to flee from Meg’s presence.

“You’ll text us when you get back to the hotel?” Cas asked, and realized how quickly he was going to have to rush through his goodbyes, as Dean was already well on his way to the door.

“If it’ll help you sleep at night,” Meg sighed.

“It will.”

“Okay. I’ll see you back in Hicksville, then, Cassie,” Meg said, and however uncharacteristically, pulled Cas in for a hug. “I think I’ll skip breakfast with you and Kerouac. For obvious reasons.”

“He’d be fine with you if you just stopped antagonizing him,” Cas said.

“I know,” Meg said, with a crooked, devilish smirk. “But this is so much more fun.”

\----------  

They wound up wandering along Bloor Street, walking slow, needlessly putting off the subway ride back uptown. The street was bright in the evening, and neighbourhood was clearly quite trendy. The buildings were low, only a few stories each, a big deviation from the skyscrapers downtown and the condos clustered up the length of Yonge Street. Every so often along their path, they could just catch sight of the colourful lights running up and down the CN Tower in the South, nearly at the shore of Lake Ontario.

The night was well underway for locals going out for a drink on the Thursday, before out of towners hit the bars the next night to start the weekend. Despite the late hour, and the fact that it was a weeknight, the street was busy.

“Man,” Dean breathed, watching a group of kids about Sam’s age duck into a club. “I’m not even that tired, honestly.”

“We don’t have to go straight back to the hotel if we don’t want to,” Cas said. “Do you want to find another bar? Someplace less…”

Before he could find the word he was looking for, Dean offered him another. “Meg?”

“I was going to say loud,” Cas corrected. “Someplace with your kind of music.”

Dean’s brows furrowed, thinking. “Isn’t that board game bar in Toronto?” He asked, digging into the front pocket of his jeans for his phone. Cas wouldn’t have known, either way.

“There are board game cafes everywhere, aren’t there?” Cas asked.

“Yeah, but here they’ve got like, _the_ board game cafe. The first one,” Dean said. “And there’s one with a bar inside.”

“I’m not opposed to that,” Cas said.

Dean had stopped walking, stepping to the side of the sidewalk and sheltered from the other foot traffic by a bike rack, and was Googling furiously on his phone. Cas stepped aside with him, and craned his next to see the phone screen over Dean’s shoulder.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Snakes and Lattes,” Dean said, when he’d found the webpage he was looking for. He smiled. “Dude, Charlie is gonna be so jealous.”

Cas had to admit, beer and board games sounded a hell of a lot more fun than anything else he could have come up with.

They had to take the train to get there in good time, rattling across the Don Valley on the tracks tucked under the Bloor Street Bridge. They’d crossed that way earlier in the evening, on their way to the first bar, but sun had still be up, then. In the darkness, Cas could make out the sparkling lights of downtown in the distance, and the white and red rivers of headlights and taillights on the highway below.

The new neighbourhood they emerged into was equally, if not more trendy, with independent shops and painfully quirky restaurants and, it seemed, none too few event venues. There were lines to get into some restaurants, a few of the bars, and music pouring out of doorways. A few enormous, but darkened, orange signs on a warehouse took up most of a block. For its reputation, the place they were heading for almost blended in with a million other establishments fighting for attention.

Inside, the bar really did seem more like a cafe, but pleasantly so. It was not silent, but quiet enough that you could carry on a conversation, though most of the tables were occupied. There were menus on the table advertising the light meals available, and the local microbrews. Dean scoffed at the list, but in the absence of anything else to drink - and, therefore, an excuse to drink the fine, overpriced beer without the shame of having gone looking for it - leaned over the bar to smile at the pretty bartender and ask for her recommendations.

Pandemic was more work than fun with only two players, Dean decided, twenty minutes into trying to explain the excessively complicated game to Cas, and they instead settled for a game of Risk, which they both already knew how to play. At Dean’s insistence, ostensibly because he wanted to send a photo to Charlie, but, as Cas was realizing more and more these days, also because Dean was more of a nerd than he tended to let on around anyone but the redhead, they wound up playing a Lord of the Rings edition, with tiny plastic orcs and elves.

After that game, they briefly joined in with another, larger party in a card game where the players had to think of words, quickly, which in practice became a game of screaming nonsense. It got progressively more entertaining the drunker the players became, and Cas lost a few rounds simply because he was too busy laughing to think.

By the end of the night, they were spending more time arguing about Carcassonne than actually playing it. Dean kept accidentally making illegal moves, due to more than a little bit of drunkenness, and was too stubborn to rescind them when Cas called him out on it. Cas would promptly make the same mistakes on his own turn, being just as stubborn on the principle that if Dean was going to cheat, so was he. Cas was a little surprised that, as loud as their arguments got, nobody had come over to their table to give them a talking to about it - until a group of five on the other side of the room had to be physically separated halfway through a game of The Resistance, in a commotion involving loud name calling and spilt drinks. Apparently late night drinking and ultimately pointless competition were not a great mix.

Or, alternatively, they were the perfect mix. He supposed it depended on how you looked at it.

Cas had to admit that he was flagging by the time a server visited their table and, with her best, most polite customer service smile, suggested it was about time for last call and that maybe they should start wrapping up their game and pay their tab.

The street was quieting down, sky finally dark, when they left the bar.

 ----------

Cas knew he wasn’t exactly an expert on Toronto’s geography, it being a city he’d only visited a few times in his life, and never for more than a couple days at a time, but even still, he was pretty sure that this was not the subway station, nor was it the neighbourhood where their hotel was. In fact, he hadn’t the slightest clue where they were, but those were the two places he could confidently say that they were _not_.

“I don’t think this is the way we came,” he said. “We must have taken a wrong turn.”

“Where the shit are we?” Dean asked. Cas figured it was a rhetorical question, but wouldn’t have been able to answer it either way. His best guess would have to be ‘some park, I guess,’ but he figured Dean wouldn’t appreciate the redundancy of saying it out loud.

They’d left a residential street some time ago, taking a gravel path across a dimly lit lawn, if for no other reason than that the street they’d been walking on had abruptly become a dead end, and the path was the only way forward. There were trees around them. Several trees, in fact. At least a dozen trees. Cas could hear traffic from the road, but couldn’t orient himself around the echoing din of it, not helped by the park being so poorly lit, owing to the fact that it must have been nearing two in the morning.

“We need a map,” Cas said, unhelpfully.

“Wait, no,” Dean said, stopping short, and Cas got more than a few steps ahead of him before he realized, with a short lived bolt of panic, that Dean was no longer at his side. He calmed a moment later, when he turned around and saw Dean’s face lit up, eerily, in the dark by the blue light of his phone screen.

“What?” Cas asked.

“We need an Uber,” Dean said.

“You have the app?” Cas asked, and Dean just laughed in response. So… Cas was guessing no.

“I’ll download it,” Dean explained.

The process, however, turned out not to be so very simple over wireless data, while blind drunk. Dean mumbled to himself, cursing at the phone every so often. Cas sat down in the damp grass and watched Dean work, sorely tempted to lie back and doze off.

Cas’ face was warm, skin just a little tingly, and definitely the pleasant kind of drunk. He watched Dean’s face in the blue light, thoughts passing through his mind and right back out again. Easy. Nice.

It was so dark out. He’d have been scared, maybe, if he was alone. But he wasn’t alone, so he wasn’t scared.

He had enough resolve to stay sitting up, but let his eyes slip closed. Just a rest, he thought. And Dean would fix everything and they would go home.

“Aha!” Dean shouted, triumphantly, startling Cas. He turned his phone to show off the screen, app installed and loaded, and Cas applauded, not sure himself if he was being genuine or sarcastic about it. Dean turned the phone back to himself and began tapping again. “Oh, wait, shit,” he said, face falling.

“What?”

“Credit card information.”

“Oh,” Cas said. “So put it in.”

“I didn’t bring my card,” Dean said. “I’ve only got cash.”

“What?” Cas asked. “Why?”

“I didn’t tell my bank I was going to Canada, Cas!” Dean shouted back, defensively. “I didn’t figure I was gonna need it tonight!”

“Fine. Just take mine,” Cas said, rolling awkwardly onto his side on the ground to reach into his back pocket for his wallet.

Inside, he found his driver’s license, cash in two currencies, and a few crumpled receipts. But not his credit card.

“Oh fuck,” Cas breathed, remembering too late.

“What?” Dean asked, taking his own turn at confusedly trying to follow the other’s thought process.

“I left it at the bar,” Cas said. “The first bar. With Meg.”

“Oh,” Dean repeated. He breathed a heavy sigh, resigned. “Well, fuck.”

Cas dropped his open wallet onto the grass in front of him. Dean made a dramatic motion of tossing his now useless phone down, too. “Well, I guess we’re sleeping here tonight,” he said, and sat down beside Cas.

“Dean, no,” Cas pleaded. “We’ll think of something. Think of the beds. Beds we’ve already paid for.”

“What, you’ve never slept in a park before?” Dean asked.

“No,” Cas said.

Dean scoffed at him. “You posh son of a bitch.”

Oh, no, was Dean joking? Cas had no idea if that was a joke. If it wasn’t a joke, it was very sad.

“Dean, that’s very sad,” Cas said.

“C’mon, we’ll share body heat.” Dean laid back in the grass and reached his arms out, like a kid asking for a hug.

Cas still had no idea if he was joking or not. He kind of forgot, then, under the more pressing issue of Dean seeking to initiate full body contact while being _there_ and _Dean._ Shitty gay dopamine brain. Christ.

“It’s a perfectly warm night,” Cas argued.

“Seriously?” Dean asked. “I give you a perfectly good shot at my beautiful body and you reject me like this? You’d kick a man while he’s down like that?”

“I don’t want your beautiful body,” Cas grumbled, but flopped down beside Dean anyways.

“Yeah, you do.”

“No, I don’t,” Cas lied.

“Then why’d you call it beautiful?” Dean asked, smiling smugly.

“Because you did,” Cas said. “You ass.”

“My ass?” Dean laughed, and once he got started he didn’t seem to be able to stop.

Cas gave up, and resolved himself to sternly ignore his friend instead of arguing. The night time dew soaked through the back of his shirt, but he would refuse to acknowledge that it caused him the least hint of a chill all night if it meant not subjecting himself to even more teasing. No matter how good cuddling sounded right now, he would be strong, God damn it.

Lying on his back, his vision was full of the dark blue sky, and the faint points of travelling light that were the airplanes, and the black shapes of silhouetted trees in his peripheral vision. It was kind of pretty. He wanted to go to sleep. He really didn’t want to do it here.

“Fuck,” Dean breathed, into the quiet. “I’m drunk.”

“You’re just realizing this now?” Cas asked.

“I’ve gotten fucked up a lot, Cas, but usually it’s been depressing fucked up,” Dean explained. “This is good fucked up.”

“Good fucked up,” Cas repeated, not asking, not necessarily, but trying to understand through the fog in his brain.

“Fun fucked up,” Dean said. “Like, I’m not pissed off at myself for it. This is gonna be a real story tomorrow. A real ‘cutting Scott Moir’s hair in a bathroom’ kind of story.”

“I don’t want a story,” Cas said, and he could hear in his own voice how much it came out like whining. “I want to sleep in the bed I paid for, Dean. A soft, warm bed.”

Dean laughed, again. “Body heat!” He shouted, reaching out again towards Cas’ voice in the darkness, into the void between them.

“No,” Cas said, and then, almost to himself, “you’re just teasing me.”

“C’mon,” Dean pleaded, and shuffled across the damp ground to wrap a grumpy, if unresisting, Cas up in his arms.

“ _Dean,_ ” Cas whined into Dean’s shoulder. “This is stupid.”

“ _You’re_ stupid.”

“You’re just teasing me,” Cas said. “You’re doing it on purpose.”

“And why would I do that?”

“Because you _know_ ,” Cas said, without thinking.

“And what do I know?” Dean asked.

Cas groaned. He was so far from being equipped to deal with this right now. He was about to fuck up so badly if he didn’t stop himself _right fucking now_.

“What?” Dean insisted.

“Forget it,” Cas said. “I’ll sleep here. It’s fine.”

“Aw,” Dean said, genuinely dejected, but when Cas squinted into the dark at his face, he could tell his usual good humour was still in place. “Tell me? Please?”

“No!” Cas argued. “You know what!”

“Tell me anyway!” Dean insisted, laughter bubbling up in his chest.

Before he had a moment to sober up and consider how mortified he was by all of this, Cas was laughing, too, shaking with it, half nerves and half exhausted realization of how utterly ridiculous the situation was.

Fuck it, Cas thought.

“I like you,” he blurted out, still laughing, before he lost the nerve.

“Oh, you like me?” Dean asked, without missing a beat. “What is this, middle school? But Cas, do you like me? Or do you _like-like_ me?”

Cas slapped Dean’s arm as hard as he could manage while lying on his side in the awkward embrace. He felt his face heat to boiling, red as ever, but he was still riding high on alcohol and breathless laughter.

“I hate you,” Cas said.

“No, you don’t,” Dean replied. “You like-like me.”

Before Cas could recover from the renewed round of embarrassed giggling, there was a warm hand on his jaw, tipping his head back just a hair, and Dean’s mouth was on his, warm, and slow, and oh so close. Cas’ eyes fell shut, and his hand found a grip in the edge of Dean’s flannel, and something inside of him lit up like a Christmas tree. He felt warm, and tingly, and light headed.

Dean... this. Dean was doing this. He was doing this. With Dean.

It took a minute to catch up and realize he wasn't actually dreaming, the world too fuzzy around the edges to be completely certain, but when he really processed what was happening - that Dean was  _kissing him_ , for God's sake - it all snapped into focus. The grass. Dean's flannel. Dean's skin. Dean's  _mouth_. Here. His, if just for this moment.

And there it was - the hardest part, as it always was with Dean, was over and done with, painlessly, pleasantly, after all of Cas’ fears and hesitations. A few embarrassingly pedestrian words of affection and Dean had met him halfway.

“I like-like you, too, Cas,” Dean chuckled, breathing in the scant few centimeters between them.

“You smart ass…” Cas muttered, and abandoned his own rebuttal halfway to tangle his fingers in Dean’s hair and drag him back down into another kiss.

They stayed like that, lying in the grass, in the dark, for a long time, kissing eventually gave way to simply holding on and breathing each other in, as the late hour and the warmth of their closeness soothed them. Cas was, despite himself, properly dozing off until he felt his phone vibrate in his front pocket.

“What the fuck?” Dean said, slurring as he was startled awake from his own cat nap.

Cas pulled out his phone and unlocked the new text.

“It’s Meg,” he said. “She’s leaving the bar.”

“Tell her we’re busy,” Dean grumbled, trying to gently tug Cas back into the cuddle.

“No, Dean, she can help.” Cas said. He sat bolt upright, tragically separating himself from Dean, and clutched his phone like the lifeline it was. “She’ll know how to find us.”

“I don’t want her to find us.”

“We can go back to the hotel,” Cas said.

“Public indecency,” Dean said, as if they had been up to anything more risqué than a tame make out session, and like it was a tempting enough prospect to make Cas choose to sleep in the park after all.

“Private indecency,” Cas countered, and was dialing Meg’s number before Dean had a chance to protest any further.

 ----------

With some amateur detective work, they collectively tracked down the park on a map, and Meg swung by in an Uber within the hour, shouting insults at them out the window as she called them over to the park entrance.

The ride back to Willowdale was fast and smooth and quiet. Cas and Dean squeezed into the back seat with Meg, despite the driver’s insistence that, no, it really would be okay if one of them sat in the front seat, and Dean threw his left leg over Cas’ right, foot hanging dangerously close to Meg’s personal space, and leaned back against the door to shut his eyes. Cas wasn’t quite strong enough to resist leaning into Dean’s body and also resuming their nap. Meg looked up from her phone long enough to scoff at them, but made no comment.

The three of them all but fell out of the car, herding each other into the hotel lobby, into the elevator, and down the hall. Dean went directly into their room, but Cas lingered in the hallway, keeping Meg up a moment longer.

“Thank you for rescuing us,” he said.

“Well, let’s not make a habit of it, alright?” She asked, but then softened minutely, smiling. “It’s fine. We deserved a celebration.”

“We did?”

“You know how close we are?” Meg asked, grabbing Cas’ upper arms in a bracing, excited gesture. “Cas, we’re gonna make it to qualifying competition. We’re making the season.”

God, he hadn’t even thought too much about that, but she wasn’t wrong. Brimming with hope, riding high on a kind of uninterrupted horizon of good feelings, the joy of the night, Cas could think of no better response than to pull Meg into a hug.

“Oh,” she said. “I hug you once and now this is a thing? This is a thing we’re doing?”

“Yes,” Cas said, contentedly, without letting go.

“Okay,” Meg sighed. “Let’s just keep this between us, alright? I’ve got an image to maintain.”

Touch-happy and low on self control, not to mention having already seen her betray her own softness, Cas couldn’t resist planting a little peck of a kiss on the top of Meg's head before releasing her.

“Ew,” Meg deadpanned. “Drink a glass of water before you go to bed, you hot mess, you.”

“I love you, too, Meg,” Cas said, retreated down the hall to his own room.

“Ew!”

 ----------

Cas did not remember to drink a glass of water before going to bed. Instead, he woke up with a pounding headache, a mouth that tasted like death, and a vague soreness in his everything.

He also woke up lying awkwardly on top of Dean’s left arm, head on his chest. Both of them were on top of the covers of the still-made bed nearest the door, fully clothed, up to and including their shoes.

“Oh, God,” Cas groaned, as quietly as he could, as not to wake Dean. His stomach turned a little, and he had to pee, but he wasn’t eager to jump out of bed to face the morning sun (oh, _God_ ) and, more importantly, leave his warm spot wrapped around the side of Dean’s body.

His exact memories from the night before were vague, sure, but he was pretty certain that this - the lying with Dean - was something he was allowed to do, now. Something they’d done knowingly the night before. The panic Cas had felt that morning so many weeks ago, when he’d woken up with Dean on the sofa, was absent. Albeit, that may have had less to do with the establishment of a mutual interest in this sort of thing, and more to do with the grogginess of the hangover dulling him to the panic of it, or the fact that Cas had not, this time, woken up with his face six inches from Dean’s dick.

If he was lucky, maybe the hazily remember cuddling wasn’t just something Dean had tolerated after a few too many drinks. If he was _really_ lucky.

Dean groaned, and Cas felt the vibration of it echo in Dean’s chest as much as he heard it with his ears. Dean’s right hand came up to rub at his eyes. “What the fuck?” Dean asked.

“What?” Cas asked back, desperately trying to stay utterly still, with his eyes shut tight, and a little put out that Dean was jostling him like this.

“Where’s my arm?” Dean asked.

“I have it,” Cas said.

“Oh, okay,” Dean said, letting his head fall back onto the duvet, seemingly content to sacrifice the limb and all the feeling in the left side of his body.

“Dean?” Cas asked.

“Yeah?”

“Did we kiss last night?” Cas asked, seeking confirmation, though he was pretty sure his memory wasn’t failing him.

“Did we?” Dean squinted up at the ceiling for a minute while the gears in his brain turned. “Oh shit, dude, we did.”

“Is that… did you mean to do that?” Cas asked.

“Probably.”

Cas only hesitated a moment. “Would you like to continue doing that?” He asked.

It was Dean’s turn to hesitate, the conversation operating in stops and starts as each man tripped over the unknowns and awkwardness of the situation. “Would you?” He asked.

Having his own question turned back on him was, in an instant, terrifying, but Cas was too tired and in too much pain to play mind games. He’d had enough courage (well, liquid courage) the night before to get his feelings out in the open, and for all the risk it was, he wasn’t going to waste it now.

“Ideally,” he said, and held a breath in anticipation, braced in case of rejection.

“Long term or right now?” Dean asked, and Cas could hear a hint of amusement in his voice.

“Both?” Cas said, uncertainly. Hopefully.

“Okay,” Dean said with a sigh. “Well then, you’re going to have to give me my arm back, because this is not a good kissing angle.”

There was a miniature flood of relief through Cas, and he let out the breath in a contented sigh, and everything from the migraine, to the nausea, to the distressing knowledge they really would have to get out of bed soon, was all entirely bearable, because Dean was…

He didn’t know the word. He knew the feeling inside, just didn’t have the mental energy to think of the right word. Maybe it was that Dean liked him or Dean wanted him, too. That Dean was _his_.

Reluctantly, Cas tried to sit up, and only made it about halfway, propping himself up on his elbows. Dean let out a little gasp of pain retrieving his arm, massaging out the pins and needles, as Cas lay back down, trying to block out the light with an arm thrown dramatically over his eyes.

When Dean kissed him again, leaning over him and gently pushing the arm out of the way, Cas smiled into it at first. At second, however, he realized that Dean’s mouth tasted as bad, if not worse than his own, and his stomach did a very different kind of flip.

“Fuck,” Cas breathed, hastily shoving Dean off of him to sit up, curl forward, and breath hard through his nose.

“Wow,” Dean said, still stretched out on his side on the bed. “You okay, dude?”

“I’m not--” He interrupted himself to focus on steadying himself again, gagging unattractively. “I don’t usually drink that much.”

“Well, I gotta tell you, this is the height of romance, right here,” Dean deadpanned.

“Ugh,” Cas groaned. “Fuck off.”

Dean shifted behind Cas, and Cas felt his hand wrap around him from behind to rest gently on his hip, a kiss pressed to the side of his neck, just above the collar of his t-shirt.

“I won’t tell anybody if you throw up,” Dean said, smiling into Cas’ skin. “And I’ll try to find you some Aspirin while you’re in the shower.”

“Oh my God, I love you,” Cas breathed, and as a nice change of pace, he found he had no reservations about how the confession would be taken.

 ----------

“So, just how do you wanna proceed with this whole… this?” Dean asked, somewhere in the farmland void between London and Windsor.

Cas stirred from where he was curled up defensively in the corner of the Impala’s bench seat, sunglasses on and breakfast bagel sandwich half eaten and abandoned on the dashboard. He was doing better, but his hangover was not going gentle into that good night.

“In what way?” He asked.

“All the ways. Like, are we justing trying this out, or are we invested in it?” Dean asked. “Do you want to tell anybody? Are we gonna go on dates or just kind of do our regular but as… whatever this is. As boyfriends, I guess.”

The word, boyfriends, gave Cas a little warm feeling in his belly.

“I think eating out and Netflix binges count as dates once you get together, don’t they?” Cas mused. “But I also think Netflix is supposed to stop being about Netflix and I’m sorry, but that’s just not acceptable.”

“What?” Dean laughed. “No Netflix and Chill? I don’t get to distract you from your crappy procedural shows with make out sessions? You’re asking a lot of me, Cas. I’m only a man.”

“As am I, and I can appreciate both,” Cas said. “But not every Netflix night can be a Netflix and Chill night. Can we agree on that?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Dean said, with phony reluctance, before he seemed to settle back into what was meant to be a fairly serious conversation. “Do you, uh…” He paused to clear his throat. “Speaking of, do you wanna talk about sex sooner, or later? Or never? Which we can talk about, if that’s what you want.”

“Oh my God,” Cas said, and curled in on himself a little further in sheer embarrassment. Never in a million years did he think he’d be lucky enough to be having this conversation with this man.

“Is that… is that a no?” Dean asked. “Because it’s fine, Cas, I’m not gonna pressure you or anything--”

“No, Dean, I do want to sleep with you,” Cas interrupted, blurting it all out. “This is just a lot of questions. And to be honest, I’m not good at this sort of thing.”

“C’mon, nobody’s ‘good’ at this awkward nuts and bolts stuff,” Dean said. “That’s why I figured we’d get it out of the way now, before we have to start wondering, making it more complicated than it has to be. We should be on the same page, start off on the right foot.”

“I just mean that I haven’t been in too many relationships,” Cas said. “As you know. And I really don’t know what this is supposed to look like.”

“Like I said, man, it’s not supposed to look like anything,” Dean explained. “You just feel it out. Do what you feel is right, follow your bliss and all that crap. What do you want it to look like?”

Cas took a minute to think. Being asked in a moment to envision an entire relationship was just too much at once, and he really couldn’t do it. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just… I just want it to be there. In my life. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah, that’s okay,” Dean said softly, and he reached across the bench to take Cas’ hand. “We don’t have to have it all figured out right now. I didn’t mean to overwhelm you. I just want to get a sense of what’s gonna make you happy.”

Cas understood. He wanted the same, didn’t want to waste this chance. He tried to remember the questions Dean had asked, and tried to answer them as honestly as possible.

“Well, you should know that I’m invested in you already, and I assume you’re invested in me, regardless of how this works out romantically,” Cas said, squeezing Dean’s hand. “I would hope it was established, regardless of how the relationships presents itself, that you’re important to me.”

“True,” Dena said, with a little smile. “And thank you.”

“And I don’t want to tell anybody yet, because I’m still not ready to be out publicly, and I honestly don’t trust anybody but maybe Anna and Sam with this. Not Meg, and certainly not Gabriel.”

“Also fair,” Dean said.

Cas sighed. “And I’m sorry, but I doubt we’re going to have much time for anything resembling a date between now and the start of the season,” he said. “I’d like to, but we’re rushing, and I’ve only got so much energy most days, I usually don’t want to go out after practice.”

“But do I still get to follow you home from the rink?” Dean asked, teasing. “Eat pizza with you and occasionally pass out on your sofa?”

“The sofa? Dean, I already told you I wanted to have sex with you,” Cas said.

“We’ll both be on the sofa. Duh,” Dean said. “I want to have sex with you, too.”

“Sooner or later?” Cas asked. “You didn’t really specify…”

“Sooner, if we’re in agreement,” Dean said. “Only if we’re in agreement.”

Cas was certain that his face was more than a little pink from the discussion, the frankness and certainty of talking about sex with Dean as an inevitable, achievable part of his near future. A shared future. Truth be told, he hadn’t been able to keep Dean, and that morning on the sofa, out of his day dreams since it happened, but he’d told himself that Dean was unattainable, or at least that pursuing his was inadvisable, for all the many weeks they’d been working together. To have made the leap, and to have his feelings returned, felt unreal, dreamy, even in the morning light which let him soberly see the facts of all that had happened the night before.

“How, um…” Cas hesitated, settling slowly and surely into this new reality, but lacking a kind of confidence in it. “How soon were you thinking, exactly?” He asked. “Because we’re going to need to agree on sleeping arrangements for tonight, right?”

“Oh, God,” Dean said, and his face fell. “I, uh, I wasn’t thinking that fast.”

“I just thought I should ask,” Cas said. “Like you said, we should be on the same page. I wouldn’t have been opposed, but I admit it wouldn’t have been my preference either.”

Dean took a deep, steadying breath. “Can I be honest with you?” He asked.

A hint of uncertainty found its way into Cas’ heart, still waiting for the other shoe to drop, but had to trust. “I’d be upset if you weren’t,” he said.

“I fucked up a lot, when I was younger, because I had some really bad ideas about sex, and who I was,” Dean explained. “And I especially fucked up a lot with men. I wasted a lot of potential with some really great guys - hell, some really great girls, too - by jumping into bed with them too early, or having the wrong attitude about it.”

This must have been what Dean had been talking about the first night in the hotel, Cas thought. He ran his thumb over Dean’s knuckles where their clasped hands still rested together on the bench between them, gently encouraging him to continue.

“Those are mistakes I want to leave behind me,” Dean said. “And I don’t want to screw things up with you, of all people. You’re something else, you know that? You’re not a hook up I happen to get along with, or somebody who’s just fun to be around and not much else. You’re important to me, too, Cas. I don’t want to waste this. I’d never forgive myself.”

Cas ducked his head, hiding his face from Dean in case he took his eyes off the road to look across the cabin, and slid the hand not currently holding Dean’s up underneath his sunglasses to rub at his eyes, so overwhelmed in that moment. “Oh my God,” he said, under his breath.

“Was that too much?” Dean asked. “I’m sorry.”

“I told you I loved you this morning,” Cas said, resigning himself to the complete emotional outpouring this conversation was becoming. “I think ‘too much’ has a wildly different meaning for us, what with you having already been the most important person in my life long before last night.”

“You were hungover this morning, though,” Dean said lightly, smiling over at Cas between glances back to the highway for safety.

“First of all, I’m still hungover, and second, that doesn’t mean I didn’t mean it,” Cas said. “Not anymore than saying it drunk did.”

“Okay, in your defence, again,” Dean laughed. “You didn’t technically say you _loved_ me last night.”

Cas gazed blankly out the windshield, trying to remember, and refusing to meet Dean’s eye in sheer embarrassment. “What did I say? Like?”

“Mm-hm. Like-like,” Dean answered, with a smirk.

“Wow.”

“It’s okay,” Dean said. “I said it back.”

“Would you have said ‘love’ back?” Cas asked, cautiously.

“How little experience have you had?” Dean asked. “A man can’t just break out the L Word on the first date, Cas.”

“A man can do whatever he feels like,” Cas said. “You said so yourself.”

Dean turned his focus fully back to driving the car, not veering off into another lane and getting them both killed, but his smile was fixed. “A man has to draw a line,” he said. “Second date. Then we can move in together and adopt a dog.”

“You’re joking, but you should know I’m going to daydream about that for the rest of the car ride.”

“Good,” Dean said. “You’ve got a couple hundred hours of daydreaming to do if you’re gonna catch up with me. I’ve picked out our cutlery set. Our dog’s name is Sundance.”

Cas had chased this feeling in his stomach for so many years, catching glimpses of it through medal ceremonies and nights out and quality time with his siblings. It was warm, and deep, and he would do anything to hold on to it, keep it close, and untainted, as long as he could.

He shuffled towards the driver’s side, leaned into Dean’s personal space, quietly grateful for the classic Impala’s bench seat design, and hoped with everything he had that Dean was feeling this, too.

\---------- 

The motel where they rested on the way back was the same one in Indiana where they’d stopped on their way North, and the woman in the motel office remembered them, greeted them warmly, and asked about their trip. They described it in vague terms, tired, and not quite eager to get into a long conversation, though truthfully, Cas could think of nothing too bad to say about it.

They got a double room, agreed upon during the ride, but crashed in the same queen sized bed anyway, this time without the excuse they could have relied upon the night before - that they were drunk, and it was the closest bed to the door. Cas managed not to crush Dean’s arm, settling for wrapping himself around Dean from behind like a clingy octopus.

They didn’t have to talk much, that night. After a long day of road noise and conversation, it felt good, like a release, like a breath, to simply be quiet and still, together. Cas felt incrementally warmer with every breath he took against the back of Dean’s neck, the subtle scent of being close to another human being, and each soft brush of Dean’s hand against his.

They arrived home to Lawrence in the evening on the next day, the summer sun still painting the sky a mellow orange as the air finally cooled after a long, hot day.

Dean parked his car and walked Cas up the stairs to his apartment, carrying Cas’ skate bag, if only to steal an extra couple minutes together before they had to go their separate ways.

“Are you sure you won’t sleep here tonight?” Cas asked, as they stood outside his front door.

“I gotta be back at work in the morning,” Dean said. “Bobby’ll be able to tell if I wear this dirty shirt a fourth day in a row. I couldn't tell you how, but he’ll be able to tell. Besides, I’ll be here to pick you up for practice right after.”

Cas pulled dean into a hug, and sighed into the shoulder of that dirty flannel. “This is probably the most incredibly privileged thing I’ve ever said, but real adult jobs sound exhausting and yours is really inconveniencing me right now.”

“Yeah, you enjoy sleeping in tomorrow, you unemployed little shit,” Dean laughed into Cas’ neck. “You and Meg’ll just have to get really good, and wipe the floor with the competition, and you’ll support us both on your mountain of prize and sponsorship money.”

“I’m not going to be your sugar daddy, Dean.”

“I’m not asking to be your sugar baby,” Dean said. “I’m asking to be your _trophy wife_. There’s a difference.”

Cas just snorted a laugh in response.

They stood, wrapped up in each other’s arms there in the hallway, for several minutes longer than they could have justified, and Dean eventually had to give Cas a little nudge to the side and interrupt the embrace.

“Neither of us are getting to bed just standing here,” he said.

“Sleep is overrated,” Cas muttered.

Dean pulled away, took Castiel’s face in his hands, and brought their faces on level, forcing Cas to look him in the eye.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said, softly.

Cas wanted nothing less, after seven straight days by Dean’s side, to admit defeat and say goodnight. A little desperate, unwilling to leave it there and let Dean walk away, he reached up, wrapped his hand around the back of Dean’s neck, and pulled him in for a slow, gentle kiss.

He hadn’t expected it to change Dean’s mind. He knew Dean was being perfectly reasonable, and practical, and already understood everything Cas was trying to communicate with that gesture of affection. But when Cas let the kiss go, pulled back to breathe, Dean chased his lips, and brought him in a second time.

After a few more minutes of this, Dean pulled away with a little laugh. “I’m not coming in,” he reiterated, gently smoothing out Cas’ shirt front.

“I know,” Cas sighed.

“Goodnight, Cas,” Dean said.

“Goodnight, Dean,” Cas replied, and let him go with only one more small peck on the lips.

Going into his apartment, being alone, after all of that, after everything, was as bittersweet as if the parting was going to last months, not hours. Cas left his suitcase and skate bag by the door and lay down on his sofa, feeling so many things he couldn’t name, and each so strongly. He’d been so saturated with Dean this week that saying goodbye felt like waking from a dream, and he was a little afraid that with this interruption, the illusion would shatter, and he would never get it back.

But, at least, it also gave him a moment of clarity, too. To reflect on the fact that Dean hadn’t rejected him, that Dean felt the same way. That maybe his crush wasn’t worthless because it was ‘just a crush’ - that maybe those early butterflies in his stomach sparked something that would grow to be so much more.

That someday, maybe someday soon, Dean would choose to stay the night.

There was trepidation in Cas’ stomach, a little bit of fear, because just like that first day he’d realized he was going to skate again, this wasn’t something he was sure he could survive losing if, God forbid, it crashed and burned. But then, there was also his heart, full, doing little triple flips at the prospect of it going joyously, perfectly  _right._


	10. Chapter 10

Cas had not expected himself to turn into such a lovesick teenager over this, but here he was, and he wasn’t really all that interested in changing.

He was dressed and ready to leave for practice when Dean arrived at five thirty, but dragged him into the apartment anyway, ostensibly because they’d get to the skating club ages ahead of Meg if they left right then, but it was a very thin excuse, and Dean didn’t need to question it too closely to realize that Cas just wanted to spend half an hour necking on that damn sofa.

“I was gone, like, 20 hours, Cas,” Dean laughed, coming up for breath.

“And in 45 minutes, we’re going to have to pretend to be straight in front of Meg. For several hours,” Cas said, gravely. “I only have so much self control.”

“Fuck, good point,” Dean said, and smiled into the next kiss.

Practice was smooth as it ever was, which was to say not at all. It consisted primarily of shaky, off beat repetitions of the programs Donna had choreographed, with glacially slow improvement and frequent breaks for Meg to re-teach Cas ice dance specific concepts he hadn’t quite internalized. The side by side step sequence was atrocious, frankly a real concern, but if Cas could start managing the distance between him and Meg, and they could repeat it again and again until it was memorized, it wouldn't take too long to shape up. Even if Dean, at the moment, needed to sit on the barrier, clapping and counting beats for them.

“How was the drive home?” Meg asked, casually, during a water break, while Dean was off taking a call from a very stressed out Sam about a wedding venue, of all things.

“It was nice,” Cas said.

“Look, I’m sorry, but I gotta ask,” Meg began, her tone indicating that she was not, by any means, sorry. “Did you fuck him?”

Cas spluttered, inhaling a mouthful of water and breaking off to cough for the better part of a minute. “I’m sorry, _what_?”

“In Toronto,” Meg clarified. “Did you fuck Dean? Or were you already fucking him and my gaydar just needed tuning?”

“No, I did not,” Cas answered, incredulously, though he wasn’t sure if he was honestly answering the question of whether or not they’d had sex, or falling over himself lying in answer to the implied question of whether or not they were a couple.

“Aw, why not?” Meg asked.

“For starters, he was drunk.”

Meg scoffed. “So were you.”

“What even makes you think we’re gay?” Cas asked. “Why would you assume that?”

“Uh, because he was practically in your lap in the Uber?” Meg laughed. “Because you two have been sad puppy dog eyeing each other since I got here? Because he dropped literally everything to pull you out of the gutter and you get all Dom Eyebrow whenever I so much as tease the guy?”

“I do what now with my eyebrow?” Cas asked, at a complete loss, but trying not to get sidetracked. “Meg, you pick fights with him. You do it on purpose, and it’s childish.”

“That’s not even remotely the point, Clarence,” Meg said. “Point is, you guys were always candidates for speculation, and either you’re both real flirty drunks, or I wasn’t totally wrong.”

“Do people think that about us?” Cas asked. “Other people?”

“I don’t know about ‘other people’,” Meg said, and shrugged. “Noah the Canadian Uber driver sure does, but I doubt anybody’s got any conviction about it, so long as they didn’t see you stumbling around the other night.”

“Meg, you can’t tell anybody,” Cas hissed, voice low. “Promise me that.”

Meg gave Cas a rapid fire of surprised, then scandalized, then appraising looks. “Is that a yes?”

“If you out me, I swear to God--” Cas said, but Meg shut him down with a steadying hand on his chest, holding him at arm’s length.

“Woah,” she said. “Deep breaths, pal. I’m not a total dick, I wouldn’t do that to you. You’re far from the first closeted skater I’ve met.”

“Meg,” Castiel insisted. “Promise me.”

Meg rolled her eyes and sighed. “Yeah, sure. Pinky swear.” She patted his chest placatingly where her hand rested.

Cas tried to breathe, but wasn't all that reassured, if he were being honest.

“So, getting back to the point,” Meg said, like a dog with a bone. “You did fuck him, then?”

“No, I didn’t,” Cas said, turning away from her pointedly, exhausted and desperate to change the subject. “We kissed, and that’s the one and only detail you’re getting out of me.”

“Aw, such a gentleman,” Meg teased, mercifully becoming distracted as Dean walked back into the rink with stupendous timing.

“He’s gonna be pissed,” Cas said, mostly to himself, as he watched Dean coming towards them.

“Good,” Meg said, with a real, patented shit eating grin.

“This is exactly the kind of attitude I was talking about.”

 ----------

Yeah, Dean was pissed.

“You’re telling me, what, she just guessed?” He asked Cas, as the crossed the parking lot.

“Yes.”

“And you just confirmed it?”

“Well, to be fair, she gave me solid evidence and I wasn’t doing a very good job of refuting it,” Cas said. “Apparently we weren’t exactly subtle about it on our night out.”

“Maybe _you_ weren’t subtle,” Dean grumbled.

“You initiated the entire thing, and at some point I’m told you literally sat in my lap,” Cas deadpanned.

“Who told you that? Meg?” Dean asked.

“Apparently you’re welcome to check with the driver.”

They reached the car, and Dean popped the trunk. The singular violent act of throwing his bag into the car with unnecessary force seemed to run through the surprisingly shallow well of his anger, and he calmed soon after.

Cas paused on his way into the car, passenger side door open, because Dean had stopped. He was leaning on the Impala, arms resting on the roof, keys in hand, pensive. He had something on his mind, Cas could tell, but was hesitating to speak.

“What?” Cas asked.

“Maybe we should put this whole thing off,” he said, quietly. “We’re busy anyway, and there’s too much on the line. I’m not worried about me, I’m out, but that doesn’t mean you should put yourself at risk for this. For me.”

“I’m not afraid, Dean,” Cas said.

“You said it yourself, when we were talking to Charlie,” Dean said. “Coming out should be your choice, and if rumours go around that sound a little too plausible, it might be taken out of your hands. I don’t want that for you.”

Cas tilted his head back and sighed, taking a calming, steadying moment to stare into the night sky above him before answering.

“I trust her,” he said, braced for Dean’s reaction.

“You _what now_?” Dean asked incredulously. “Cas, she’s a total bitch.”

“Yes,” Cas said. “But she’s a bitch who knows we’re in this together. That she’s got just as much to lose as I do, and she plays games with you, Dean. I don’t deny that and I don’t like it, but she’s sweet to me.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, she is,” Cas insisted. “In her own, horrible way, she is. And she wouldn’t drive this team - and her own career - off a cliff just to spite you.”

“I don’t like it,” Dean said.

“I know that,” Cas replied. “But that’s the way it is, and there’s nothing we can do about it, now. She knows. Nothing we can do will change that.”

“We can take a step back, Cas,” Dean said, softening. “I want you to be safe.”

“I don’t stay in the closet just to be safe, Dean,” Cas said. “I do it because I don’t want to be denied. I don’t want doors shut in my face because of things I can’t change. And if I give you up now, I’m just cutting out the middleman and shutting the doors myself. Different doors, but still important ones.”

Cas reached across the roof, taking hold of Dean’s hand where it rested, holding the keys.

“I want you,” Cas said. “And I’m not going to be bullied into throwing you away.”

Dean smiled across at him, a little tired, but intensely loving.

“You know you’re kind of stupid, right?” Dean asked fondly.

“I don’t really care,” Cas answered.

“So are we gonna get in the car or stand here holding hands and looking stupid all night?”

Cas released Dean’s hand, but refused to let him off the hook. “Do you always cover up for softer feelings with quips, or am I just very lucky?” He asked, sliding into the passenger seat.

“Damn, Cas,” Dean said, laughing. “Do you really have to call me out like that?”

Cas pulled the door shut and hid a smirk. Despite himself, he wasn’t sure he had it in him to live in fear anymore, walking on eggshells. Not when he could have this. No contest.

 ----------

Anna made a valiant attempt to sneak from her office to her car without being assaulted by any anxious or desperate skaters, but Meg had eyes like a fucking hawk, and they both knew full well that registration for the 2017 Southwestern Regional Championships had opened up online the previous evening.

“Anna!” Meg called out, uncharacteristically, terrifyingly cheery. “Do you have a sec?”

“I’m on my way out,” Anna said, eyes unflinchingly forwards, back stiff, and power walked right past where Meg had skated up to the boards.

“It’ll be super quick,” Meg said.

“I’m not registering you for regionals until I see both programs done passably at least once,” Anna said, without stopping.

Meg’s face fell, the put on friendliness giving way to her usual blend of smugness and annoyance.

“You don’t even watch us skate,” she spat. “How would you even know how we’re doing?”

“I’m distracted,” Anna countered. “Not blind.”

“So you want us to improve faster, but you won’t actually coach us?

Anna flagged as she neared the door, probably realizing she couldn’t quite get away with just walking out of the conversation. “We’ve been over this,” she sighed.

“Anna, please,” Cas said, butting in. “You promised you’d do our paperwork. I’m sorry about Meg.”

“Hey!” Meg snapped.

Anna finally turned to address them both properly, locking eyes with Castiel.

“I never promised,” she said. “I agreed. And I may not know a damn thing about ice dance, but I know when a program needs work, and technically, I’m still your coach.”

“Barely,” Meg scoffed. Cas gave her a hard side eye, but in the absence of any further snark, turned his attention back to his sister.

“We’ve got plenty of time before November to clean it up,” he said.

“And you’ve also got plenty of time before registration closes to make extra sure you're going to be able to perform well, and safely,” Anna said, gently.

“You don’t think we can do it?” Cas asked.

“Of course I think you can do it,” Anna said. “But I don’t want you pushing yourself too hard to meet a deadline because we’ve paid the registration fee, or made promises to the press.”

“He isn’t made of glass. Are you, Cas?” Meg said. “Give him a break.”

Anna turned her attention to Meg, finally, a barely contained fire in her eyes.

“Exactly how well do you know Castiel?” She asked. “Because I’ve known him all his life. I’ve been his coach for four years.”

“Mm, maybe your closeness and your personal attachment are blinding you to the facts,” Meg said, faux casual. “Maybe it’s time for Cassie to fly a little further from the nest.”

Cas tipped his head back, sighed deeply, and sent a silent prayer out into the universe that once, just one time, he could get through a day without his partner picking a fight, albeit that this time, it was technically on his behalf. If this is the kind of personality that meshed so well with Azazel, he wasn’t especially surprised the man ended up in prison over a scoring related attempted murder.

“Meg, can we please have a conversation without all of this?” Cas asked. “One time?”

“Castiel, I’m trying to help,” Meg said, with that forced, fake friendliness and ‘fuck you’ smile that Cas was beginning to recognize as her one and only expression of unbridled rage.

“I didn’t ask for defending, and if I have a disagreement with my sister, that’s between us,” Cas said.

Meg pouted, huffed, and with reluctance so strong it looked as if it might literally kill her, she let it go. “Fine,” she spat, before skating back off towards the far end of the rink to find somebody else to torment, namely a distracted and as yet blissfully unaware Dean. “Asshole.”

Cas brushed it off as best he could. He was becoming accustomed to her, even fond of her, sure, but it was moments like these he realized exactly how Meg still managed to get under the skin of just about everybody else.

“Christ, Cas, you sure she’s really the only option you’ve got?” Anna asked, stepping closer and keeping her voice low. “You could be stuck with her for years.”

“For what it’s worth, apart from her needling everybody I love, we actually get on alright,” Cas said. “And frankly, for what it’s worth, I agree with her about registration. Anna, you know I can do this, and you know I know my own limits.”

Anna sighed. “Cas, I don’t know your limits and it’s basically my job. How do I know if you know them? We haven’t spoken enough about this. It’s different now, with your leg. You never tell me how you’re doing, how it’s holding up.”

“It’s holding up just fine,” Cas said.

“No pain?”

“Some pain, sure. But it broke in half, Anna,” Cas sighed. “My kneecap is more metal than bone. The fact that every step isn’t agony is a miracle in itself.”

“That isn’t as reassuring as you seem to think it is,” Anna said.

“I’ve never known a skater who didn’t have at least some pain most of the time. Mine’s just a little worse,” Cas said.

“If the pain is worse, you could be putting yourself at more risk.”

“I can’t stop, Anna,” Cas pleaded. “It’s this or nothing. It’s this or giving up. We’ve talked about this.”

“I know that! Just--” Anna cut herself off as she had inadvertently began to raise her voice, and she took a calming breath before she continued. “Take it slow, Cas. Take it easy.”

“I am.”

“This sport means a lot to you, and I know that because it means a lot to me,” Anna said. “But if you can’t walk unassisted, you sure as hell won’t be able to skate, you get me? Your mobility is more important than some comeback.”

Cas was deflating, like Anna had pulled a stopper out of him by voicing the absolute antithesis of his worldview. He leaned against the barrier, and in a moment of weakness, he put his head in his hands. God, he was so tired.

He was so scared. He’d just managed to forget, the last few weeks, and keep himself from thinking too hard about how high the stakes were, how much he had riding on this.

“You know that, don’t you?” Anna asked, gently.

“The comeback isn’t as important as being able to keep skating,” Cas said, finally. “Skating is most important.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“It’s easy for you to say that when you don’t have to give it up,” Cas countered, exhaustion creeping into his bones. He wasn’t angry, didn’t mean to hurt Anna, but he needed her to understand. “I can’t coach if I can’t jump. I can’t do ice shows. Meg is my one and only shot.”

Equally exhausted, it seemed, Anna rubbed her face. “Just… just don’t waste it on impatience, Cas. Yours or hers,” she said. “Just give me that.”

Cas reached over the barrier to put a hand on his sister’s arm, for his own comfort as much as for hers. She took his hand with a little squeeze.

“I worry about you,” she breathed.

“I know,” Cas said, with a soft, sad smile. “That’s what family does, isn’t it?”

 ----------

Lifts were going to be new for Cas, and undoubtedly the biggest challenge he’d be facing in the transition to ice dance. To support himself gracefully was one thing, but to carry the weight of another person, even such a slight little woman like Meg, would require some training, which came in the form of a mind numbing workout routine of weight lifting and squats.

It was the squats that made his knee absolutely sing with pain.

Cas may have misrepresented his pain level somewhat, to his doctor, to his sister, and to his boyfriend (if he may be so bold as to call Dean that in the early stage they were at). There may have been well stocked, well used stashes of over the counter painkillers and topical pain creams in his gym bag, his skate bag, and his bathroom medicine cabinet.

But pain was part of the game, he knew. Pain was something he could handle in the doses he was getting it, and he wasn’t about to start worrying and sounding the alarm until it became something he couldn’t grin and bear.

Anna had dislocated her hip midway through her senior career and been in mild pain just about every time she’d skated since, and it hadn’t been Cas’ decision, then, whether or not she should play through it, and so, with all due respect for her concern, this was his problem and his alone. If he told her, she would only refuse to file their paperwork, and then it would really be over for him.

If he told Dean, Dean would only give him hell and threaten to go to Anna.

So if Cas popped some Advil in the bathroom before sitting down on the sofa with Dean after practice, or had been forced to wear the pressure sleeve during every practice for weeks on end, or sometimes had to lay quiety in bed, first thing in the morning, breathing through a wave of pain, some kind of spasm in the joint, none of those things were deal breakers. It was the cost of doing business, now. Nobody’s problem but his.

At least as long as he did Meg the courtesy of not dropping her on her ass.

“The entry’s the tricky part,” Meg explained. “Once I get up there, the weight’s all on your shoulders. Two feet on the ground. Nothing fancy.”

“This seems… this seems out of my league, Meg,” Cas said, squinting at the video on Meg’s laptop screen, where, frame by frame, she repeated and rewound and re-repeated the lift entry as performed by a couple far more talented and decorated than they could ever hope to become, let alone before November. “He’s just lifting Maia with, what, pure deltoid strength? His arm is straight out, and he’s taking all her weight.”

“No, look.” Meg stopped scrubbing and tapped a nail on the screen. “Her arm is on his shoulder, see? The weight is distributed, and the momentum does half the work anyway. And besides, if it’s in your arms, you don’t have to lift with your knees.”

Dean, across the men’s locker room (where, of course, Meg should not have been, but where she’d followed Cas nonetheless) crooked his neck to get a good look at the video.

“Are you stealing moves from the Shibutanis?” He asked. “That’s a pretty distinctive lift.”

“I don’t see you coming up with any bright ideas,” Meg spat over her shoulder.

“Why don’t you just go out there and do The Goose? It’d be about as subtle,” Dean scoffed. “Oh, right, sorry, I bet you’re too good to steal from world champions. Just silver medalists.”

“When the world champions are _overrated_ and _stupid_ , yeah,” Meg said. “Fuck The Goose. We could do The Goose if we wanted to, right, Cas?”

Cas paled. “Please don’t make me,” he said quietly.

“What? Why not?” Meg asked.

“Because his kneecap will turn up eight years from now under the bleachers if he’s gotta support your fat ass on his knee at that angle,” Dean said.

“Fuck you, Winchester.”

“I would never call your ass fat,” Cas said, stepping in to calm the storm before it escalated further. “But that’s the gist of it, yes. I could do it, maybe, but it would hurt like hell.”

Meg spun her head to glare at Cas.

“Not because of you,” he clarified. “That lift would destroy my knees no matter who my partner was. The joint isn’t exactly sound.”

“Then forget that,” Meg said. “Just tell me if you can do the lift I brought to you in the first place.”

Cas looked back at the screen, and reached out himself to flick back and forth through the blurry video frames again, watching Alex swing Maia up and down with each repeat and rewind. He sighed.

“I suppose there’s only one way to find out.”

 ----------

Meg was a good sport about being dropped the first dozen times. Thankfully it was usually a matter of dropping her, upright and on her feet, in the first part of the lift entry, or at least warning her first with a shout before he lost his grip and let her slide off his back before she could settle onto his shoulders in the sort of backwards fireman carry they were aiming for.

The 14th attempt put Meg where she needed to be, with only a minor struggle to settle her there, and Dean applauded from the sidelines until Cas realized they hadn’t gone over the exit from the lift, and he had to gently bend to lower Meg to the ground.

By the 20th attempt, they’d managed to land it three more times, a little more cleanly, and for all they’d only been at it maybe an hour, Cas felt completely winded, like they’d been practicing all day.

“My arm is tired, Meg,” he told her, and knew it sounded like a wimpy excuse even as he was saying it.

“Get over it, dude,” she said, circling around. “One more time, let’s go. If it doesn’t hurt, you aren’t actually building the muscle yet.”

“It already hurts. I need a break.” And not just for his arm, either. His knee, predictably, and his ankle, far more worryingly, had also registered complaints.

“One more, Cas,” Meg said. “Come on.”

“Can’t we just practice the rest of the program?” He asked. “We put in a lot on the lift already, today. We’ve got time.”

“Time?” Meg asked, genuinely not seeming to understand. “Your sister won’t register us until we get it right. We’re on a strict time limit, here.”

“It’s not that strict,” Cas sighed.

“Do you want this or not?” Meg asked, something in her eyes turning vicious.

Cas took a deep breath, and rubbed his eyes. Meg had just been dropped 17 times in a row, and had a right to be pissy, sure, and that was on top of Meg’s baseline pissiness, but fuck. _Fuck_. He had a right, even a responsibility to himself, to take a break, didn’t he?

Normally, he’d be siding with Meg’s push back against the codling he’d been receiving since the accident, but if he didn’t listen to his body, at least once in a blue moon, when it complained, how was he not just lying to Anna?

“One more,” Cas agreed, reluctantly. “Just one, Meg. Then I need a break.”

“Attaboy,” Meg said, with a self satisfied smile, and patted his arm encouragingly.

The entry went alright, that time. He hefted Meg up onto his shoulders, turning as he went, with the tiniest of steps. His shoulders, his back, his right arm all ached, sure, but he could handle it. He could manage it. His knee twinged and he winced, but he could pull through.

But then a step on his right foot faltered. His ankle wavered. He slammed his left blade back down onto the ice, and, without concern for his back, bent at the waist to shove Meg off, as gently as possible, but as quickly as he could.

“Woah!” Meg shouted in surprise, but landed, though unsteadily, on her feet. “What was that?”

“I need a break,” Cas repeated. “I just need to sit.”

Meg’s hand suddenly on his arm was, that time, more of a soothing gesture than her previous demeanor should have allowed. If she were able to hear the tightness in Cas’ voice, she clearly got the message.

He skated to the gate and passed Dean on his way out, biting the inside of his cheek harshly to distract from the pain in his leg, to keep himself walking straight, to keep from limping or faltering. He’d be in more pain, now, trying to skate normally, than if he tried to favour his left foot, but it meant less of a worry for everyone around him, and when ‘everyone’ meant Dean and Anna, it was a pain he’d take gladly. He just needed to get to his bag, take some painkillers, get off his damn leg for a while, and hope against hope that the pain would fade and he could come back to the ice again tonight.

“You okay, buddy?” Dean asked, as Cas bent stiffly to put on his blade guards.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Here, sit down,” Dean said, shoving his own bag off the bench the make room for Cas.

“I’m just going to the washroom,” Cas said, before continuing to the locker room, and Dean didn’t try to keep him.

 ----------

They spent the rest of the practice running through the step sequences, and gave it a few lift-free run throughs of the short dance before Cas suggested that they call it a day, and despite how little time they’d managed to put in since Cas’ extended and conspicuous break, neither Meg nor Dean had argued, and they agreed to pack it in.

Cas pointedly did not invite Dean upstairs when they pulled into the parking lot of his apartment building, defying a trend unbroken since their return from Toronto. Dean’s face fell, subtly, as Cas pushed open the passenger door and made to leave, which gave him pause, and caused him considerable guilt.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said, quickly, like he’d just decided at the last moment to catch Cas before he left completely. “Before you go, can I ask you something?”

Cas paused, sighed internally, and lowered himself back down onto the seat, his weight borne heavily on his arms where he had pushed off the back of the bench and the frame of the open window. He looked to Dean, and nodded.

“Are you okay?” Dean asked. “You seem upset.”

“I’m fine,” Cas said, for what felt like the hundredth time that week.

“Because if I said something that upset you…” Dean trailed off, didn’t seem to be able to find the right words.

Cas’ heart lurched at the realization, a fresh spark of guilt in his chest. His face went soft and he reached over for Dean’s hand, clutching it hard, as if the strength of his grip would be proof of his caring.

“You didn’t do anything, Dean,” Cas said. “If we had a problem I’d talk to you about it.”

“Are you sure?” Dean asked. “You just, you did a complete one eighty out there today. You seemed royally pissed off.”

“It’s not you,” Cas reassured him. “I swear.”

“But it is something, then?” Dean pressed. “You aren’t fine?”

“No, I’m--” Cas cut himself off, and sighed. He didn’t want to play twenty questions like this, but he didn’t want Dean to worry, either. “I’m just tired,” he lied.

“Did Meg say something to you, today? Was she giving you a hard time?”

“No,” Cas said, coming to his partner’s defence. “Well, sort of. But she wasn’t out of line, Dean, and she didn’t mean it to come across that way. She’s under stress, too, with the registration thing.”

“What did she say?” Dean asked.

Cas sat back and briefly considered the pros and cons of shutting the conversation down right then and there, declaring it none of Dean’s business. Except, he’d long since invited Dean to make this sort of thing his business. Besides, Dean was probably imagining Meg saying something far more vicious and insulting than she actually had.

“I told her I wanted to take a break,” Cas said, deciding to soften the dialogue in his recounting, on both sides of the conversation, instead of outright lie to Dean. “She wanted to keep going, and I could tell she was stressed, so we agreed to go one more time and then I was sorer than I thought I’d be, and I was frustrated that she’d pushed me when I told her I was at a limit.”

Dean’s face had gone dark, anger replacing concern.

“But,” Cas continued, half to defend Meg, half to placate Dean. “I wasn’t clear with her that it was a limit. She thought I was just tired.”

“She still shouldn’t have said that, though, Cas,” Dean said.

“Maybe not, but I’m not mad at her,” Cas explained. He was a little mad at her, but it was still true enough. “I’m just mad that I hurt myself.”

That seemed to make something click in Dean’s head, a puzzle coming together, and his expression whipped right back from angry to worried. “How badly?” He demanded.

“It’s fine, now, I just had to take a break,” Cas said.

“Is your knee still giving you trouble?”

“No,” Cas said, lying again. “It was my shoulder. And tricep. That whole area.”

It was another truth on a technicality - his arm and shoulder both ached like hell. And true enough, if horribly disingenuous, his ankle had taken the lion’s share of the pain, far more than his knee had.

“And you’re fine now?” Dean asked.

Cas laughed mirthlessly, tiredly. “Well, I’m sore, but that’s what happens when you lift a human being, over and over, that many times in one night.”

“Okay,” Dean breathed. “Okay. I’m sorry, I’m being kind of overbearing, aren’t I?”

“You’re concerned,” Cas said. “Because you care. I know I can tell you if you take it too far. We can be honest about that sort of thing, can't we?”

“Of course we can,” Dean said, though he seemed a little put out, maybe even uneasy. Maybe embarrassed, Cas thought.

“I like that you care, Dean,” Cas said. “I’m annoyed that everybody’s on my case about the leg, sure, but I like knowing that you do it because you care. It’s the same with Anna.”

“Well… thanks, I guess,” Dean said. “For understanding that. And I’m trying to be understanding that you don’t like being babied, I really am, I just hate not knowing if you’re really okay.”

“No, I think you understand. I don’t feel talked down to with you,” Cas said, squeezing Dean’s hand and smiling at him. “And I want you to know that the only reason I’m not inviting you up is because I’m tired and sore and I wouldn’t be very good company tonight.”

“You don’t have to entertain me, you know,” Dean said. “Not that you need to invite me up if you don’t want to, but I’d be just as happy if we were just sitting together, hanging out. We don’t even need to talk. Heck, if you’re that tired, I know you’re not gonna be up to cooking for yourself - I’d be happy to make you dinner and then fuck right off after, if that’s what you need right now.”

“No,” Cas said. “That’s far too much ask of you. You don’t owe me anything like that. If anything, I owe you that sort of favour.”

“Nobody owes anybody, Cas,” Dean said, with a comforting smile. “I’d do that if you wanted because… God this is gonna sound cheesy.”

“What?” Cas asked.

“Because sometimes ‘I love you’ isn’t roses and fancy dinners and elaborate sex,” Dean explained. “Sometime it’s making sure the person you love gets a good meal, or enough sleep, or a safe ride home. Sometimes it’s showing them that you love them just as much when they’re sick, or tired, or drunk, or upset as you do when they’re happy and beautiful. And sometimes that means finding the little things you can do to make life easier without expecting anything back.”

All the stresses of the day, the contexts, the complications of life slipped from Cas’ mind all at once. He forgot his exhaustion, his soreness, his frustration. His heart was in his throat, listening to Dean speak, and his face felt warm and flushed, and he was overwhelmed by the urge to get closer to Dean, to embrace him, and so he did. He slid across the bench awkwardly, as best he could, twisting his body in the restrictive space of the cabin to wrap his arms fully around Dean, who he felt tense a little in surprise, and squeezed, hiding his face in Dean’s neck as he felt Dean’s arm wrap around him and embrace him in turn.

Dean loved him, Cas realized. He’d been showing it since their mutual confessions, and since long before that, and Cas had been so absorbed in the enormity and the minutia of everything they’d been dealing with that he’d just never stopped to consider things that should have been oh, so obvious. He’d only seen Dean showing him the same love he’d shown since they’d met, the same love Dean showed everyone he was close with. Dean’s love was a fact he had assumed on a very different level, never really internalizing, and which, despite the hungover slip of the tongue he’d had in the hotel room in Toronto, he’d never explicitly returned, either.

“I love you, too,” Cas said, throat tight, and he was getting embarrassingly dewy-eyed over this tenderness, worn thin and emotional after the trials of the day. He hadn’t been able to show it in that way that came so naturally to Dean, with actions instead of useless, useless words, but Cas would find a way. He’d turn his feelings into action. He’d earn the love Dean had given him, even if it took him a while, even if Dean swore up and down that he didn’t need to.

Dean sighed, melting a little into the embrace. “I didn’t actually say those words,” he teased. “Second date, remember?”

“You did more than that,” Cas said quietly, holding on tight.

Cas gently extracted himself after another minute, reluctantly, but he needed to see Dean’s face for a moment. To look him in the eye and, in the absence of anything else to give, offer his trust in a way he wasn’t sure he could have offered to anybody else. Dean seemed confused, but whether it was by Cas willingly ending the hug or by Cas’ suddenly grave expression, he wasn’t sure.

“I want you to come upstairs,” Cas said, plainly. “Not because I want you to cook for me, though I would gratefully accept that gift, but because I want to spend time with you.”

“Okay,” Dean said, with an uncertain smile, clearly still intimidated by Cas’ seriousness. “That’s good, right?”

“You need to know that my leg hurts, and I pushed myself too hard today,” Cas said, as bluntly as he could. “I’m sorry that I lied to you.”

Dean's brow furrowed, face soft and, in his way, almost scared. He glanced down at Cas’ leg, as if he could have seen through Cas’ clothing and into the heart of the problem, found a solution.

“How bad is it, Cas?” Dean asked, quietly.

“Nothing I can’t handle,” Cas said, and while he may not have bet his life on that complete truthfulness of that statement, it was something he more or less believed. “Do you understand why I lied?”

Dean swallowed. “Yeah,” he said. “But you shouldn’t have. I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“You can’t fix this,” Cas said, breaking bad news gently, and he saw Dean’s face shift as he realized Cas wasn’t wrong. He couldn’t fix Cas like he could fix a car, no matter how much care and attention he invested, and Cas could see how much it weighed on him. How difficult it must have been for him, as a lifelong caregiver - for both Sam and their father - to have, wittingly or not, made himself a caregiver of sorts to someone for whom he couldn’t take all the burden.

“Why did you tell me?” Dean asked. His voice had become rough with emotion, but it wasn’t an accusation. It was sad, if anything.

“Because you’re important to me,” Cas said. “And after everything you’ve done for me, the very least you deserve is honesty, not me shutting you out now, when you’ve already seen all the ragged edges and decided you want me anyway.”

Dean didn’t answer with words. He brought up one hand to rest on Cas’ jaw, just to touch, no other action or motive. Just a simple gesture of intimacy. To touch because it’s the only way to get so close to the thing you cherish, to be understood where words fail. Cas laid his own hand over Dean’s, holding it to his face, there, like a lifeline.

“Do you forgive me?” Cas asked, maybe a little desperate, but not daring to show it.

“Of course I do,” Dean replied.

“Do you still want to come upstair?”

“Cas,” Dean said, with a breathy, sad little laugh. “There is nothing in this world that I want more.”

 ----------

After dinner, Dean borrowed some pajama pants and an oversized shirt of Cas’ that wasn’t quite as oversized on Dean, and in the comedically domestic routine that they’d built long before their relationship had made the leap to the romantic, they picked something inane off the Netflix queue and settled in, just as Dean had predicted they would.

It wasn’t long, after such a trying day for them both, before they’d wound up stretched out, parallel to one another, in the too small space between the edge of the sofa and the back cushions. Cas’ legs, pain finally ebbing from the sore one, were tangled up with Dean’s, bare toes tucked into the warm space between two cushions.

When he was too tired to keep his eyes open, Cas rolled over, tucked his face into Dean’s chest, and closed his eyes, taking in the warmth of his partner’s embrace and letting the TV’s soundtrack fade out as he fell into a doze, Dean’s hand tracing absent minded circles across his back.

A little while later, Cas was jostled by Dean, bringing him back into the world of the living.

“Hey, buddy,” Dean said, softly.

The credits of the film were rolling, Cas realized, and begrudgingly, he tried to shake himself awake enough to hold a conversation. “Hey,” he answered, disoriented.

“Time for bed?” Dean suggested. “As nice as this is, if we both sleep on the sofa, we’ll both be sore in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Cas said, and sighed deeply before hefting himself up, groaning softly, to a sitting position on the edge of the cushions.

“Can I steal a pillow from your bed before you pass out?” Dean asked. “So my neck doesn’t get fucked up?”

“What are you talking about?” Cas asked, a bit slow on the uptake in his groggy state. “Wait, do you not want to sleep with me?”

“As super far as we went emotionally tonight, I think you need to actually get some sleep,” Dean said, with a smirk.

“I didn’t mean like that,” Cas said. “We don’t have to do anything, just… like in Indiana. That was nice.”

“The word you’re looking for is ‘cuddling’,” Dean teased, and rested his heavy head on Cas’ shoulder. “Yeah, that was nice.”

“We don’t have to if you--” Cas began, but Dean interrupted.

“I want to,” Dean clarified, and, falling to the same fatigue as Castiel, lazily turned his head to press a tiny kiss to Cas’ shoulder. “C’mon, sweetheart, let’s go to bed.”

The pet name only filled Cas with renewed warmth and contentment, even as they settled into his queen sized bed together, burrowing deep under the thick duvet, shuffled in, pressed together, and held each other as close as they could as they drifted off to sleep.


	11. Chapter 11

The programs went through another two weeks of practice, and a decently competitive performance was, finally, almost within their reach. Another few days was all they would need to polish off Oye Como Va for Anna’s approval, and Vessel wasn’t all that far behind.

It was a completely preventable flaw in their short dance that during the one and only included lift, at the moment when Meg’s weight landed on Castiel’s shoulders, their combined weight rested entirely on Cas’ right leg. This was an obvious risk, something he really should have brought up as soon as he’d noticed it, and then the problem could have easily been fixed, if only he’d been honest about the pain it caused him, or if they’d had a coach supervising them, or if Donna had chosen their lift.

But he hadn’t been honest. And they didn’t have a real coach. And Donna hadn’t chosen a lift. The problem was never dealt with, and they sailed, as a team, directly towards disaster while Cas stayed absolutely silent.

And then, as they neared the end of the evening’s sixth or seventh practice run, they went into the lift, and Meg landed, harder and heavier on Castiel’s shoulder than he’d been anticipating or was prepared for.

The spark of pain started in his ankle and shot up his calf, and all of a sudden Cas’ muscles were in shock, out of his control, shutting down and _failing him._

He cried out as they went down, and he heard Meg shout, too, and in an instant, like no time had passed at all, he was lying prone on the ice, teeth clenched in pain, gripping his calf.

The fall back at Nationals had been as if in slow motion. He’d been numb enough to understand what was happening as he fell, and when he’d landed, he’d been knocked out cold on impact, oblivious to the panic and to the worst of the pain, at least until he’d woken up in the ambulance.

This was different - as opposite as could be. The pain came first, not last. The clarity he’d had back then was replaced by a blinding panic, and even before he had time to process how very, very bad re-injuring his ankle was, the pain overtook him in extremes, every thought blotted out by the reflex in every muscle to try to block out the agony.

The ankle had rolled, he realized, belatedly. The pain had come from the weight alone, but the pain had shaken him enough that he’d lost his balance, his foot slipped, and the joint rolled, going down the with the combined weight of two grown adults on top of it, and he didn’t know if it was sitting in any way correctly at that moment. The whole lower half of the leg was so consumed with hot pain that he couldn’t feel anything else properly, every other sensation drowned out by the flood of it. It could be broken, again. He had no idea, and that was the most terrifying part.

“What the fuck?” Meg shouted, in a rage. Cas didn't have the self control in that moment to respond, to check on her own wellbeing or to tell her off, or even to glance up at her. It was all he could do to keep from screaming, himself.

He heard Dean shout, too, but was too distracted to make it out, and he couldn’t do any more to answer him than he could to answer Meg. He just lay there, rolled onto his side, breathing harshly through his nose for lack of the ability to do anything else except force himself to be silent, be still.

Dean’s boots, sliding awkwardly across the ice surface as he walked, came into view. Dean knelt on the ice beside Cas, one firm hand gripping his upper arm.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said, with barely forced calm in his shaking voice. “Just breathe, okay?”

“I am,” Cas grunted, through gritted teeth.

“Is it the knee or the ankle?” Dean asked.

“Ankle,” Cas managed to spit.

Dean’s hand left his arm, and his disappeared from Cas’ narrow field of vision for a moment before hands were laid across his calf, a gentling touch.

“Can I feel it?” Dean asked.

Cas wanted so badly to say no, to beg him not to, to pull his leg away and just hope, naively, that the pain would go away on its own, that he’d wake from a bad dream and the problem would vanish in the daylight. Instead, Cas shut his eyes, held his breath, and gave Dean a stiff, curt nod.

Dean merely holding the foot, feeling the ankle, wasn’t so bad. The renewed bolts and sparks of pain came from the jostling of the joint when Dean started to unlace his skate. Cas’ voice betrayed him, and he let out a weak noise, distressingly close to a whimper, but it stayed small and quiet. Dean must have heard, though, and he slowed his motions, keeping the foot steady as he gently tugged the lace through the eyes, until the entire string was only hanging off the end as he bent the tongue of the boot forwards and out of the way.

“I’m gonna take the skate off, okay?”

“Don’t,” Cas said, tightly, reflexively, almost in a panic to avoid further pain. “I can’t-- just give me a minute.”

“Okay,” Dean said, and slid his hand back up the calf, away from the sensitivity, thumb tracing comforting circles just under the hem of Cas’ trackpants, and waited.

“What did he do?” Meg asked, voice from above telling Cas she was back on her feet. He glanced up to look at her, and her rage had gone completely, melted away and replaced with concern. There was blood on her face, dripping from her nose, and Cas only hoped she wasn’t otherwise hurt by the fall.

“I don’t know,” Dean confessed, without taking his eyes off Cas.

“It rolled,” Cas said.

“I don’t think it’s broken, Cas,” Dean said. “But I can’t tell much with the boot covering it.”

“Okay,” Cas breathed. “Okay. Just take it off.”

“How do you want it? Gentle, or like a Band-Aid?” Dean asked.

“Fast. Just pull it,” Cas said, squeezed his eyes shut, and braced himself against the oncoming flare of pain.

“On three, okay?” Dean said. “One…”

He ripped the skate off on two. Cas couldn’t contain a short, loud scream at that, his good leg kicking out in a reflex to pull away, push off the thing causing the pain. Dean dropped the skate instantly, and whipped his attention right back up to Cas’ head to comfort him, grabbing onto his forearm and letting Cas grip his.

“Hey, there you go,” he said, soothingly, almost in a whisper. “Worst part’s over, now. The sock can’t be that much worse than the laces, right? And I don’t see any blood, Cas, which means your bones are all inside your body this time, where they belong.”

He was offering Cas a small, uncertain smile, and an honourable, if wasted, attempt at a distraction. Cas was reminded of a preschool teacher attending a skinned knee, asking if they were “going to have to cut it off" with a knowing smile.

“Fuck,” Cas spat, at a loss for any real words.

Dean stayed with him, distracting and comforting him, for another few moments, running his fingers through Cas’ hair in a desperate attempt to soothe him. “I know, baby,” he whispered. “Just let me have one more look and we’ll get you to a doctor, okay?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Cas breathed, and between the pain, the embarrassment, and the weight of this latest accident settling in on him, he felt his face grow hot, tears welling in his eyes.  “It’s not going to heal right again. I ruined it.”

“Hey, now, you don’t know that.”

“I do.”

Dean floundered a few seconds, at a loss. “Come on. Let’s not hold a funeral for your career just yet, okay?” He suggested, and turned back to Cas’ leg to hitch down the sock and inspect the ankle. Cas didn’t answer, just let Dean take hold of his foot and hid his sad, sobbing face in his hands.

It was more than a little tender, and Dean’s touch hurt more than it had before the skate boot had come off. Dean’s cold fingers on the heated skin of the injury felt electric on the hypersensitive joint.

I don’t think it’s broken,” Dean said, reassuring him again. “It’s not even that badly swollen, Cas.”

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter. It was the looped voiceover in Cas’ head, over and over. It was a loss. It had all been for nothing. It was over. It didn’t matter.

He’d fucked it up.

Castiel had been told, in no uncertain terms, that if the ankle or knee were badly injured a second time, he wouldn’t be able to skate again. Hell, he’d been told he might not walk right, or without pain, ever again. And still, he’d pushed and he’d pushed and this? This was inevitable. This was just what he’d been barrelling towards this entire time, he realized. He’d done this to himself, with his hubris and his pride, and now he was paying the price. He would be paying for the rest of his life.

It didn’t matter. It was over.

The twenty minutes he spent lying awkwardly across Dean’s back seat, cradling his injured limb, stifling his tears as much as possible while Meg navigated their way to the clinic, were twenty minutes during which Cas was absolutely certain he’d finally hit rock bottom. More than that first night in the hospital in Kansas City, more than when he’d tried to skip the engagement party, more than all the times he lied to Dean, or to Anna, about the pain.

In January, Castiel fell from grace. In August, he was sure, he’d just destroyed his only hope that he would ever be able to meet his old life halfway.

\----------

“It’s incredible you didn’t re-fracture it,” Dr. Barnes said, almost reverently. She was holding Cas’ foot, touching the joint, while Cas sat up on the exam table, head tilted back against the wall, just trying to breathe through his nose. “We’ll get you an x-ray just to be sure, but I think it’s intact. A sprain isn’t good news, but it could have been a lot worse. Castiel, why didn’t you talk to me about this, if this move was causing you pain?”

“He was scared you’d make him stop,” Dean answered for him, from a rickety chair in the corner of the examination room. His voice betrayed the exhaustion and upset he’d been barely concealing from Cas and Meg thus far.

“I’m not telling you you’re benched completely, but you’ll definitely be off the ice for a month or two, at least,” Dr. Barnes continued. And they’d miss their chance at the coming season, at least, she said without realizing it. Meg was going to be devastated. “And you can’t go back to doing whatever caused this. Was there something in particular about this lift?”

“It was just the weight,” Cas explained, feeling about as exhausted as Dean sounded. “I just… it was just too much. It made it hurt so badly that the leg just gave out.”

“Then you’re going to have to cut those,” Dr. Barnes said. “Can you do a routine without them?”

Cas’ heart caught in his throat, and Dean, more gently, this time, again answered on his behalf. “They’re required,” he said.

“I can’t skate ice dance without lifts,” Cas said. “And I can’t skate singles without jumps.”

Dr. Barnes seemed to realize, then, the inevitable end point of the conversation, finally getting the context she needed to read between the lines of her own speech. “I’m sorry, Castiel,” she said, softly. “Who knows? We can look at it again in a few months. If you involve me more directly, I can maybe intervene before it gets this bad. If you want to try again.”

Cas was silent. He didn’t even manage to look at her, or acknowledge that she'd spoken. Despite the pain in his leg, his heart was going numb, like all of this was a movie he was watching, somebody else’s life, something apart from him and his own body.

“Do you need a refill on your painkillers?” Dr. Barnes asked.

Cas nodded absently. “Please.”

Dr. Barnes produced a pen and prescription pad from her coat pocket. “I can call you with the x-ray results, but I’ll need to see you again in a couple weeks to make sure you’re healing up okay,” she said. “So if you want to try again, we can start talking about it then.”

“I’ll think about it,” Cas said, and he could hear the emptiness in his own voice, and knew better than to delude himself all over again.

 ----------

Dean had to all but carry Cas upstairs. He’d let Cas try, because Cas had insisted, a few steps of increasingly frustrated hopping, but Cas had only tired himself out and finally accepted help. Dean was able to heft him up with an exaggerated ‘oof’ and not too much struggle, saving Cas any further embarrassment.

“Sofa or bed?” Dean asked, when they got the apartment door open and Cas was back to slowly shuffling along with an arm around Dean’s shoulder.

“Bed,” Cas said.

Cas never felt great about letting other people take care of him, even sick or injured, but even if he’d been keen to get back on his feet in that moment, the energy had drained entirely from his body. He slouched against the headboard, eyes unfocused, feeling like his head was full of static, and let Dean get him some ibuprofen, a glass of water, an ice pack, a cup of tea. This and that. Cas listened to Dean banging dishes around in the kitchen and he was blank, empty, nothingness accented with these horrible pangs of regret, and fear.

It was over, all over again. The thought was a heavy, suffocating weight in his head, filling him up and leaving no space for anything else, not even sorrow.

Dean returned to Cas’ room to deliver the last round of little necessities, collected for Cas’ convenience from around the apartment - including the cane that had been sitting abandoned in the coat closet for the better part of four months. He sat on the edge of the bed, and watched Cas hold his tea without drinking it.

“She said you could try again, Cas,” Dean said, softly.

“I don’t think I can,” Cas replied.

“Sure you can, you just gotta be more careful next time.”

“I can’t, um…” Cas took a moment to collect his thoughts, find the right words, though it felt almost impossible to focus on any idea, especially this one, for more than a few seconds at a time, thoughts drifting in and out of his mind in quick turns. “I wasn’t sure I could handle doing this twice. Losing… this. But now I have to, and I know now that a third time would be too much. Anna was right - I should have just cut my losses.”

“I don’t believe that,” Dean said. “I don’t believe for one second that you’re gonna be an old man someday, looking back, thinking you actually regret giving it everything you had, Cas.”

“Can we not talk about this right now?” Cas asked, a little desperate.

Dean relented, then, though Cas could tell it was killing him to do so, and sat in silence with Cas for a while, holding his hand, unsure of how to comfort him.

“Do you want me to give you space?” Dean asked, concerned, but none too vulnerable himself, either. “I can go.”

“God, no,” Cas breathed, his voice cracking, and clutched harder onto Dean’s hand. “Stay. Please.”

Cas broke down completely, that night, stripped down to his core and laid bare. The brief, barely contained tears of the evening gave way to open sobbing in the nighttime, hiccupping and shaking, soaking the front of Dean’s shirt with his crying, as Dean held him close, rubbed his back, and gave him the safest place in the world to let it all out. Cas cried, and cried, and cried, until he was empty again, and exhausted, and he had no idea what they would do tomorrow, or the next day, or for the rest of his life, but in Dean’s arms, sleep finally taking him, he was granted a reprieve for a few short hours, if only through unconsciousness.

 ----------

He woke up late in the morning, after Dean had left for the day, which in itself had involved a brief period of wakefulness so he could continuously reassure Dean that yes, he could leave him to go to work, and no, Cas wouldn’t implode if left to his own devices for a few hours.

As much as he would have liked to disappear right back into his hermit life, lock himself away in his apartment, and never be seen again, Cas had to tell Anna sooner or later. He woke knowing he couldn’t delay it, couldn’t try to hide from her, or she’d only find out from somebody else - if she hadn’t already. And so he steeled himself, sitting up in bed, and dialed the phone.

“It’s not as bad as it could have been,” Cas reassured her, after he’d explained the situation. “I’ll be okay, I’m just off the ice for a while.”

Over the line, he heard Anna breathe a shaky sigh. “This is exactly what I was afraid of, Cas.”

“I know,” Cas said. “You were right. You can say you told me so.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Anna asked, clearly irritated by the implication. “I’m sorry that this happened. This isn’t something I’m happy about.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” Cas said.

“At least it was set off by something specific,” Anna said. “We know now, we can just make sure you don’t do it again. Ice dance was never really your calling, anyway.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Well, you’re going to be able to come back to the ice, right?” Anna asked. “Eventually, anyway. Just not in ice dance.”

“Nor in singles, Anna,” Cas said. He was unsure where her confusion was, when she should have understood the consequences as well as anyone. He didn’t know why he had to spell it out for her like this, but he knew it was hurting him to do it. “I’m out. I can’t do ice dance without lifts or singles without jumps.”

“But you can still skate,” Anna said. “You’re lucky that you’ve got that, still.”

“Where, Anna? How?” Cas asked. “I can’t compete. I can’t do ice shows.”

“You can come to the rink and skate for fun, like other 99% of the world,” Anna said. “Y’know, fun? The reason we figured we got into this shit in the first place?”

Vague hopelessness almost sounded better than whatever Anna was suggesting. She’d given him a concrete possibility, sure, but it felt wrong to accept it, to step back, to do anything less than rage, so to speak, against the dying of the light.

Cas curled in on himself, and buried his face in the hand not numbly pressing the phone to his ear. He took a breath to speak, but lost the will in the same moment, letting the air out in a shaking, pained sound he was sure Anna could hear.

“I don’t know if that’s good enough,” Cas admitted, voice tight, almost as if it were a question.

“For you?” Anna asked, “Or for everybody else.”

“Both,” Cas said.

Neither of them spoke again right away, and he just breathed into the quiet phone line for a few minutes to collect himself before continuing into the hardest admission he had to make. “I don’t know what else to do with myself, Anna,” he said. “I don’t know what else I am.”

“There’s something out there for you,” Anna said, with a melancholy little laugh. “Other people do other things every day. I’m sure we could, too, if we had to.”

“I don’t want to,” Castiel said. It was a blind, and selfish thing to say, maybe, but staring into a void, the complete absence of anything else he thought he might be good at, care about, he had nothing else to say. He was nothing more and nothing less than skating. A future without that was a future he couldn’t see a life in, and he was tumbling into the deep, dark unknown.

He was at a loss. And he was afraid.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The content warning for suicidal ideation and discussion of suicide applies to this chapter.

Over the next few weeks, Cas started to feel like more and more of a burden every day, and it didn’t have the slightest thing to do with having to hobble around the apartment with a cane again. Instead, it had almost everything to do with Dean.

Cas wasn’t certain Dean had been home, to his own apartment, more than once or twice in the time since the accident - the second accident. Cas reinjured his ankle and suddenly they went from movie nights and sleepovers occasional enough that Dean hadn’t even started leaving a change of clothes or a toothbrush at Cas’ place, to living together, for all intents and purposes, and it had happened overnight.

In the mornings, Cas would sit up in bed as Dean puttered around, getting ready for work, and would be awake enough that it wouldn’t be especially obvious that he was planning to go right back to sleep as soon as Dean left. He managed very little during the day, most days, capping out at maximum productivity if he made it to the grocery store unaccompanied, but usually had to settle for a bare minimum of self care including basic hygiene and not starving to death. The TV stayed on, but Cas wasn’t sure he was watching it, anymore, so much as he was staring at it as a fractional step up from literally staring at the walls. Dean would come home, and they would cook a meal together, if Cas’ leg could tolerate standing that long, and if not, he would sit at the kitchen table while Dean cooked and listen to him talk about Bobby’s - the cars, the work - or about Sam, and when Dean asked him questions he would answer simply because he didn’t have any new stories to tell, or any particular thoughts about much of anything.

He’d known he was imposing on Dean already when Dean was only devoting a couple hours each day to him, for practice and impromptu pep talks, but back then Cas had at least been able to give him success, or at least the potential thereof, and measureable progress, as proof of returns. Now, he was only consuming Dean. He knew it. It was one of the few concrete facts that never quite left his mind. He made Dean into a caretaker rather than a companion through his need, through Dean’s refusal to just let him collapse into himself and be broken.

Things would be better, Cas thought often, if Dean just went home. He could be alone, and lie in bed, and nobody would expect him to eat, let alone eat well, or clean himself up, or think too hard about anything in particular. And one day his undeserved trust fund would run out, and in this vague way he kept promising himself wasn’t technically suicidal, he thought that maybe then, when he could no longer maintain even the basics of food and shelter, everything would just be over, and maybe that was okay.

 ----------

Cas hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep, but he was woken by the sound of the front door being unlocked. He made to sit up, almost irrationally ashamed of being caught asleep in what must have been the middle of the day, but before he could get to his feet, the door opened and shut, and there was Dean, sitting on the sofa beside him, and then, promptly, flopping down on top of Cas, face down and with a tired sigh, pinning him to the cushions.

Dean didn’t speak, just tucked himself in alongside Cas, face hidden in Cas’ shirt, dusty work boots hanging awkwardly off the edge of the sofa to keep from dirtying it. He inhaled, deeply, and Cas could feel Dean melt into him as he relaxed.

Cas raised his hands to card casually, soothingly, through Dean’s hair. “Long day?” He asked.

Dean made a soft noise, wrapped an arm around Cas’ middle, and snuggled, for lack of a manlier word, deeper into the embrace. “S’okay now,” he mumbled.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“It’s nothing,” Dean said, turning his head so his voice wasn’t completely muffled by Cas’ clothing. “Too many cars, not enough hours in the day. And Sam.”

“What’s wrong with Sam?” Cas asked.

“He’s starting to worry too much about the wedding,” Dean said. “I tried to give him mom and dad’s rings and he wanted to pick a fight about it. He does that when he’s stressed - jumps at shadows, gets pissed off for no good reason.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Cas said.

“I should have known it would set him off,” Dean continued. “He didn’t really know mom, and he never got on with dad. I just wanted them to stay in the family, you know? To mean something. Not wind up shoved in a safety deposit box forever and ever.”

“You could still use them yourself,” Cas suggested, speaking without really thinking.

Dean snorted, and propped his chin up on Cas’ chest to smirk up at him. “Is this you proposing, sweetheart? Because I don’t remember everything about my mom, but I doubt she had hands as big as yours.”

The thought hadn’t even crossed Cas’ mind, and was the last thing he wanted to imply just then. It had always seemed like a given that this thing with Dean wouldn’t last forever - and especially so now. That Dean would find someone better, or that they would grow apart. Cas had never dwelled excessively on how likely it was that things between them would fall apart, but he had also never deluded himself. He couldn’t imagine a future that looked like that - a future where they could spend their entire lives together.

God, Cas wondered when the last time was he could imagine any kind a future more than a year or so in advance, through the thick grey cloud of uncertainty. These days, he could barely imagine a future beyond the end of the week.

“Hey.”

Cas startled out of his thoughts. Dean had raised himself up on an elbow, and the fingers of the opposite hand just barely brushed against Cas’ jaw, seeking his attention.

“Sorry,” Cas said, reflexively.

“Would it be so bad?” Dean asked. Concern, maybe even a shade of hurt, was cast across his face.

“What?” Cas asked.

“You were a million miles away all of a sudden, as soon as marriage came up,” Dean said. “It really makes a guy insecure.” He tried for a nervous laugh, but it couldn't quite cover the truth of his fears, though Dean usually hid them so well.

“You were joking, weren’t you? I knew that,” Cas said, hastily. For all that he would never ask for it, for all it was far too soon, and the circumstances were all wrong, and he was far from worthy of it just then, he’d never refuse Dean outright like that - even if maybe he should. But Dean hadn’t been asking. Not really. “It’s just hard to imagine, what with everything else going on right now.”

Dean’s eyes flickered across Cas’ face, hesitating, ruminating, and for a moment Cas wondered if he’d been more deeply offended than he’d thought. Before he could worry too much, and without another word, Dean leaned in and kissed him. Quiet, chaste. All too brief. It was a gesture of understanding, maybe forgiveness for the accidental transgression, where words would only have been clumsy.

When he pulled away, Dean settled back down against Cas’ chest, and Cas resumed idly petting Dean’s head. There was rest, then, a few almost pleasant minutes of quiet he could soak in, when the static in his head went quiet, and he lay with Dean, without pretending, without expectation. One of those precious moments of respite that reminded Cas of how hard it would be to give Dean up when the time came, though it was a thought he pushed away then.

“What did you do today?” Dean asked, after some time in silence.

“Not much,” Cas said. There was that question again. He’d long since started wishing Dean didn't feel obligated to ask that every day, as if there would be some new answer coming any time soon, as if suddenly Cas would get up and make himself useful while Dean’s back was turned.

“Did you eat?” Dean asked.

“A little,” Cas said. In truth, the only food he’d had all day was a few stray handfuls of potato chips when his stomach had started actually aching from hunger around midday.

“You hungry enough for dinner?”

Hungry, yes, but getting up now to cook seemed like an immense undertaking, and he was just so damn tired.

“Are you?” Cas asked, instead of answering the question himself.

“Yeah, I’m starving,” Dean sighed, and moved to get up, rolling awkwardly off of the sofa and off of Cas. Cas showed extreme self restraint in not whining audibly at the loss of contact, and just watched from where he lay as Dean disappeared into the kitchen. He heard the refrigerator door open. “What do you feel like?” Dean called.

“I don’t care,” Cas answered.

“Chicken?”

“Sure.”

The fridge door shut. Dean ran the tap. A few seconds later, he came back around the door frame.

“How’s the leg?” He asked.

It was a surprisingly layered question. First, the concern, the face value question of how he was feeling and healing. Second, the implied request to come into the kitchen and join him in their domestic routine, and the answer to that request was, sadly, going to be a no. As much as Cas would like to say otherwise. It wasn’t a matter of energy, although, admittedly, the energy wasn’t there either, but that his ankle had been throbbing most of the day. If he tried to stand and help out, Dean would only notice the pain, sooner rather than later, and make him sit down again anyway.

“Not great,” Cas admitted. “I don’t think I can stand on it without the cane.”

“Okay,” Dean said. “You wanna chat or are you still tired?”

If he was being honest, there was one thing Cas hated more than his own inability to take care of himself, and that was sitting around and watching while other people did it for him. And always, these days, that was Dean. The word came back to mind - burden, burden, burden. It featured so much in his self talk, recently.

“Actually, do you mind if I go take a shower before dinner?” Cas asked. “I didn’t get around to it today and it’s been…” He trailed off, trying to remember his last shower, but the static had returned to his head and his memories were slipping away like sand. “It’s been a while.”

“Yeah, sure,” Dean said, with his ever patient smile, and disappeared back into the kitchen.

 ----------

Once he’d turned on the water and lowered himself gingerly to sit at the bottom of the tub, Cas found that the energy he’d summoned to escape the discomfort of the kitchen had run down, and he just sat there, still, letting the warm water run over him. The white noise of the spray on the ceramic balanced out with the white noise in his head, and it was so easy to zone out and forget the world outside the dim little space the tub became when he drew the shower curtain closed.

He’d wanted to be away from the kitchen, but he hadn’t really wanted to get in the shower. He didn’t want to wash, then. He knew he wasn’t going to want to get out of the tub in ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. He didn’t want to eat, and he didn’t want to sit up at the kitchen table idly filling time between a socially acceptable dinner time and a socially acceptable bedtime. Even talking with Dean was starting to be tiring, a fact which caused him no small amount of guilt. It took more out of him than he’d ever have expected to simply make eye contact, and nod in the right places, and come up with answers to sad, stupid questions like ‘what did you do today?’

He hadn't done anything. He didn’t want to do anything. He wanted nothing.

And Dean wouldn’t let him become nothing.

It irritated him, sometimes, frustration bubbling up when Dean was especially persistent, but the small unpleasantries were not why the doubts were growing inside him. Why the vague, ill defined drive to leave was growing inside him. That wasn’t for his own sake at all.

Instead, it was that word again. Burden.

Dean had spent his life proving, again and again, that he would carve himself hollow to give to others if they needed it, and Cas knew he wasn’t entitled to what little of Dean was left. Dean needed somebody in his life to support him, lift him up, and help him face his own demons. The last thing he needed was a cinder block around his neck, dragging him, drowning him. He deserved better.

Dean wasn’t going to marry Cas. At least, Dean shouldn’t marry Cas, and so Cas couldn’t let him believe otherwise. Dean should go away, and let Cas fade away, and find somebody better, and love them, and be loved by them, and let somebody else carry his weight, for once. He should reserve the energy, and time, and attention, and love he had for people who’d earned it. For Sam, and Charlie, and Bobby. For himself.

Dean had more than earned that.

 ----------

Cas returned to the kitchen, leaning heavily on his cane, hair damp, in the same dirty clothes he’d been wearing all day. Dinner was already on the table. Cas realized he had no idea how long he’d been sitting in the tub.

Dean was leaning against the countertop when he came in, looking at his phone, but his eyes came up when he heard Cas walk in.

“Hey,” he said. “Feeling better?”

Cas looked him up and down, hesitating. Eyes, face, hands. Dean. The man Cas loved - more than he loved himself.

 _Okay_ , he thought. _Okay._

He nodded, though no, he didn’t feel any better. He felt worse, even, but instead of getting into it and wasting both their time and energy, he instead went ahead and sat down, hooking his cane on the edge of the kitchen table, and waited for Dean to sit.

Dean should be sitting, he’d decided. Maybe Dean should eat first, too. Maybe that was the polite way to do this. Maybe Cas should eat, too, because Dean had been so kind as to make a meal for him, but he was more concerned with anything he ate coming right back up when his whole body, every system and part of it, felt so fundamentally wrong.

He didn’t look to Dean, couldn’t quite force himself to. He looked to his plate, instead - to, and not at, his eyes just shy of focused, listening to the scape and creak of the chair as Dean sat, and waited, but Dean didn’t pick up his cutlery, didn’t touch the food.

“What’s up?” Dean finally asked. “You’re freaking me out a little, dude.”

Cas let his eyes flick up to Dean’s face, just for an instant, quick enough to only catch that Dean was watching him intently, more concerned, he supposed, with Cas’ sudden grim disposition than with the ritual of the meal. Maybe he shouldn’t wait, then. Maybe it was easier this way. The dread was powerful, and Cas did not want to just come out with it like this, didn’t feel ready, but then again, the mounting anxiety of putting it off was just as painful.

“I just…” Cas stumbled over his words, clumsy and helpless. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about, and we really need to talk.”

“Okay,” Dean said, the word drawn out like a question. “I’m here. Let’s talk.”

Cas was standing on a ledge, at a choice. He didn’t want to do this. But he knew what he needed to do to make things right, to make the world work to way it should for once. He took a breath.

“I just don’t know if this is going to work out,” he said.

Dean didn’t respond right away. Cas couldn’t bring his eyes up to look, again, but he could feel tension in the air that he was sure was only half his own terror. Dean was plainly aware, must have been, that whatever conversation they were having, he didn’t like it, but Cas’ lack of clarity, of specificity, delayed the full realization, dulled him to the hurt he’d feel shortly.

Or maybe he’d be relieved, Cas thought.

“This?” Dean asked, confused.

“Us,” Cas explained, throat tight.

There was a long, tense pause as Dean processed what Cas was saying. Cas still didn’t look. He only hoped this was easier for Dean than it was for him.

“I thought this was going pretty well, all things considered,” Dean finally said. “I thought this was helping.”

“It is,” Cas said. “And it’s not that I don’t appreciate everything you’ve done, everything you’re still doing. But I’ve had time to think about it and we have to accept that this just isn’t sustainable, Dean.”

“Sustainable?” Dean asked. He laughed, but it was bitter, scared, and hard-won. “What, so it's not worth having if it isn’t forever? Cas, we’ll either breakup someday or stay together until one of us dies. That’s how life works. That’s every relationship in the history of relationships. That doesn’t mean there’s no point.”

“It’s not about that,” Cas said.

“Then what’s it about?” Dean asked. He bent forward in his seat, trying to see into Castiel’s downturned face, and reached over to place his hand over Cas’ own on his knee, that small part of Dean coming into his field of vision. The touch almost burned. If it hadn’t been for the weight of Dean’s hand, Cas’ own hand would be shaking - the opposite hand certainly was. His face felt hot, his throat felt tight, and his eyes burned.

“You can’t keep doing this,” Cas said, quietly. “It’s not fair. This isn’t your responsibility.”

“This?” Dean asked.

“Me,” Cas said. “I’m not your responsibility. You’ve got so many better things to worry about.”

Dean’s free hand was at Cas’ cheek, suddenly, demanding his attention. The angle shifted, and the next thing Cas was aware of, Dean was kneeling on the linoleum in front of his chair, tilting Cas’ chin, forcing him to meet his eye. Dean’s face was painted with open fear and desperation, eyes searching Cas face like he’d find some clue he could use to make this whole situation go away. He was speaking, softly, but Cas couldn’t really hear it over the ceaseless static and the distraction of his own body’s stress response, the words passing into his head and out of his memory instantaneously, and without ever being understood.

His eyes were wet, he realized, though he held himself too tightly wound to risk acknowledging it to himself. Dean’s thumb wiped away a tear as it rolled down his cheek.

“You know that, don’t you?” Dean asked. Cas had already forgotten what it was he was meant to know. Static hiss. “Cas?”

“I want you to go,” Castiel said, numbly, blindly.

“No way,” Dean said.

Cas fixed Dean with a look, trying to keep his face and voice steady, a commandment when he knew Dean wouldn’t bend to this as a request. It was a thin mask over a trembling form. “I said I want you to,” he repeated. “You need to go.”

“And I said no way,” Dean repeated, equally as forceful.

“Why not?” Cas asked, voice rising despite his best efforts at calm. There was a desperation rising in him, the need to make Dean leave, and as soon as possible, because his own resolve was not infinite. Because this was already killing him. And wouldn’t things just be easier if Dean would stop this and just let go and couldn’t he see how much harder he was making things for them both?

“Because I love you, dumbass,” Dean said, voice rising to meet Cas’ just shy of a shout. “Because I _know_ you, and you scare me sometimes, and if I walk out…” Dean paused, swallowed, and visibly settled himself before continuing, volume back under control. “If I walk out that door, I’m gonna be up all night, every night, worrying that you won’t be around when I come back.”

“What does that even mean?” Cas asked.

“What the hell do you think it means? What am I supposed to think is gonna happen if I leave now? Am I supposed to think you’re gonna wake up healthy and safe tomorrow?” Dean’s words weren’t meant to hurt, but they still made the mantra of Cas’ burden louder. “I’m not gonna let you do something stupid.”

“I’m not,” Cas said, and tried to sigh, but it came out closer to a short series of sobs. “It doesn’t matter, Dean. It just doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me,” Dean said.

“I want you to go,” Cas repeated, for the third time. He was so tired of this fight. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m the one leaving you.”

“It doesn’t, and I’m not going.”

Desperate, riled up, Cas couldn’t keep his voice under control, body shaking. “It’s not up to you!” He shouted, the last of his calm worn away. “You promised me! You said you would respect my decisions, even if they were wrong!”

“Not this one!” Dean screamed back. It scared Cas, the shout, the force behind it. The intense expression on Dean’s face, and the way his breaths came loud and fast in the quiet after the shout, like he’d just run a marathon. Like Dean, too, was doing his best not to cry. He realized, belatedly, that Dean already was crying.

It was sobering to see. When Dean spoke again, he was quiet, fingers firm on their points of contact with Cas’ hand and face, gripping, like they were the only things keeping Cas from becoming unmoored and floating away, out of reach.

“You don’t get to choose to give up, Cas,” he said. “On me, maybe, but not on yourself.”

Cas focused on breathing, for a time, and tried his best to power through the hiccuping interruptions in the steady rhythm of it when he sobbed.

“What else am I supposed to do?” He asked, earnest, and afraid.

“I don’t know,” Dean admitted. He looked about as scared as Cas felt. “You get better. You let me help you.”

“To what end?” Cas asked. As desperate as he was to believe Dean, there had to be something to get better for, something beyond survival, and the fog over his perception of the future was far too thick to see through on his own.

“This feeling isn’t forever, Cas. I’ve seen you come through it, and I know you can do it again.”

“I only got better before because you got me back on the ice,” Cas said. “That’s over, now.”

“No, it’s not,” Dean said firmly, squeezing his hand.

Something went tight around Cas’ heart at the realization that Dean was going to put him through this argument yet again, over and over, like one day he would suddenly forget he was hurt and would go back for more punishment in the rink.

“Please, Dean, please don’t do this to me anymore,” he pleaded. “You know it’s over, now. You know I can’t go back like this.”

“Because you can’t lift?” Dean asked.

“Yes,” Cas said. “Obviously.”

“Okay,” Dean said, brows furrowed, and he was clearly thinking out loud more than anything. “Then let’s say you didn’t have to be the one doing the lifting.”

“The ISU rule is that the man lifts the lady,” Cas said. “And regardless, I highly doubt Meg would be capable.”

“Who says you have to skate with Meg?” Dean asked.

Cas sighed. “It’s irrelevant, Dean,” he said, and he’d meant to explain further, talk Dean down from going on a useless tangent of hypotheticals, but before he could, Dean was standing. Cas followed him up with his eyes, and Dean wordlessly tugged him up by their still joined hands.

Cas followed, wary, unsure where Dean was going with this, but willing to trust him. He leaned heavily on his free hand, pushing off the table in the absence of his cane. Once they were both standing, Dean stepped towards him, closing the short distance between their bodies until they were all but pressed together, front to front, and wrapped one arm around his middle.

For a moment, Cas thought this was simply some incredibly awkward kind of hug. Then Dean pulled back the hand that had been holding Cas’, hiked it up under one of Cas’ thighs, and suddenly, the ground went out from under him.

Or rather, Cas came up from the ground.

Dean hefted him up with a grunt of effort, leaving his feet to flail several inches off the kitchen floor, one leg loose and the other half wrapped around Dean’s hip for purchase. Cas yelped in surprise, panicking hands flying to cling to the shoulders of Dean’s henley as he tilted awkwardly to one side and finally settled into the hold.

“What the hell?” Cas cried.

“I haven’t been training for it,” Dean said, voice tight with physical exertion. “But I can do it.”

It took a moment for Cas to process what Dean was saying, exactly what this had to do with anything. Realization washed over him, along with feelings he couldn’t quite sort out, bad feelings and warm feelings all at once. Dean honestly thought he could… that _they_ could…

“The ISU--” Cas began, but Dean was clearly anticipating the argument.

“Screw the ISU,” Dean said. “You never cared about the medals anyway, Cas.”

“We couldn’t compete at all, Dean,” Cas said weakly.

“But we could skate,” Dean countered. “Ice shows, or just on our own. That’s what matters, right?”

“There’s no precedent for this.”

“We’ll blaze a trail, then,” Dean said. When Cas looked down, unsteady in Dean’s untrained arms, Dean was smiling up at him with eyes full of hope. “Look, Cas, I can’t promise that this’ll be enough, alright? I can’t promise you’ll be happy. But I can promise you that just because it doesn’t look like you thought it would doesn’t mean it’s over. I can promise you that there’s something for you to stick around for.”

Cas looked into Dean’s eyes and there he found the last, protected embers that had sparked their journey together. The faith in himself that he’d lost so thoroughly that it never occurred to him that Dean still kept it lit in this way, true belief instead of simply a soothing platitude.

He saw something past next week, like sun peeking through clouds on an overcast day.

“Cas?” Dean asked.

“Okay,” Cas said, nodding, though he was sure his face was still screwed up as he fought tears, so overwhelmed in that moment.

Dean loosened his grip, dropped Cas’ leg and put his strength into holding Cas’ middle and letting him slide slowly, safely, back down to the floor. As soon as his feet were on solid ground, Cas threw himself against Dean, wrapping his arms fully around him, gripping the back of his shirt, and burying his face in the crook of Dean’s neck, face hidden as he breathed even, laboured breaths.

“I know it’s not what you wanted,” Dean said. “But--”

“It’s enough,” Cas interrupted, with a sob. “It’s more than enough.”

Dean’s warm hands were at his neck, then, and at his waist, embracing him again, holding onto to Cas as tight as Cas was holding onto him. Cas felt Dean’s breath against his hair as he, too, tucked his head in, and if Cas wasn’t mistaken, Dean was crying, quietly, right along with him.

But it was different, then. Worlds apart from where they’d been an hour previous. These tears were release, relief. These tears were a promise.

A promise to stay. A promise to fight. A promise to accept.

Like before, like always, there was fear.

Like before, like always, there was hope, the truest and most enduring gift Dean could have given him, and he gave it over and over again.


	13. Epilogue

Two Years Later.

\----------

There were far more fun reasons to keep one’s new husband up half the night than stage fright, but, well, there they were.

Excitement. Fear. As always, as ever. Dean pacing the living room while Cas sat on the sofa and gently talked him down, and then switching places ten minutes later when a tangent reminded Cas of just how long it had been since he’d actually been seen skating by anyone but his closest friends and family.

Eventually, a shared bundle of nervous laughter as they sat together, thighs touching, and tried to drown out the anxiety buzzing under their skin with a few fingers of whiskey.

So when the alarm went off in the morning, at least in that moment of transition between sleep and wakefulness, it physically pained Cas to know how little they’d slept, and how much he really did need to get out of bed. He rolled over and slapped blindly at the alarm clock, before letting his body flop back down onto the mattress and, stubbornly, squeezing his eyes shut again.

There was a soft grumble behind him, and Dean’s arm landed across his middle. He shuffled forward, pressing his chest against Cas’ back.

“Morning, Sunshine.”

“Mm,” Cas intoned in acknowledgement.

“We gotta get up,” Dean said, breath warming the back of Cas’ neck.

“Mm!” Cas groaned, aggressively. He tried to roll away from Dean, intent on shoving his head under a pillow to hide from the world a little longer, but alas, his opponent was too strong, and Cas was held firmly in place. He could feel Dean’s body shaking against him with what he knew was silent laughter.

“You’re such a baby,” Dean laughed.

Cas kicked him in the shins.

But by then, at least, he was awake. A blessing or a curse, depending on how you looked at it. He cracked his eyes open, the morning light falling in stripes between the slats of the blinds, across the garment bags hanging over the closet door. Across the sheets. Across his hand on the pillow, and Mary Winchester’s resized wedding ring.

Cas caught himself admiring it often. He would lift his hand, as he did then, in the dim bedroom, turn it this way and that, and remark at how seamless the alteration was, at how perfectly it fit, and at how natural and right it looked on his finger. Dean caught him, then, as he sometimes did, and let go of his grip around Cas’ stomach to lace their fingers together, smiling over Cas’ shoulder.

John’s ring clacked against Mary’s. But then, they weren’t John and Mary’s anymore. Not really.

“Tell me we’ll be fine, today,” Cas whispered.

“You know we will,” Dean said.

“Tell me anyway.”

Dean kissed Cas’ shoulder. “We’re gonna be perfect.”

\----------

The skate school was inspired by Dean’s stories, and couldn’t have happened without the full support and cooperation of Anna and a half dozen of their friends, but it was Cas’ day-to-day.

Between coaching and organizing, what had started as an invite-only figure skating class for kids in the area with the potential, but not the wealth, to go far in the sport, had become a series of classes, and subsidizing coaching fees, and then providing financial assistance with equipment and competition expenses, and all of a sudden it was a real, accredited foundation and a more than fulfilling day job for Castiel. What started as a nice idea to get back out into the world became dedication to the kids and a new facet to his passion for skating.

Dean hadn’t had this kind of help, bringing up Sam. Cas couldn’t step back in time and take that hardship from his husband’s too-young shoulders. But this, this was something.

And _this_ was growing, hence the need for a real fundraiser, and being based in a skating rink, with a large group of friends and family as skilled skaters and the little rising stars to show off, there it was. The teeny tiny hole in the wall ice show - one time only, in small town middle America.

And hence, the rink he’d called home for years, now, so full of people like he’d never seen it before. Patrons with their overpriced tickets, parents gathered in the front rows, or fussing over their children’s hair and costumes in the hallways, and none too few fans there for Anna, or Sam and Jess, or Kali, rather than purely in support of the cause.

And, of course, the excited murmurs through the skating world of Castiel’s first public performance in almost three years. In a new discipline, no less. And with a man.

The marriage hadn’t been a secret. There’d been no kind of official announcement - Cas had abandoned his old, public social media accounts and Dean barely used his - but they’d been living openly in the public sphere, surrounded by people who did Tweet and Instagram to fans on a regular basis. They’d attended Sam and Jess’ wedding as a couple, and Cas had no doubts that snapshots from their own nuptials had shown up online. It hadn’t been official enough of a coming out to necessitate defending himself to anybody, and the worst of the backlash had never made it to either of them, personally.

Maybe it would have been different if he was still competing. Probably. But he wasn’t competing, and it didn’t matter anymore. The only things that mattered were the here and now, and the here and now were pretty damn good.

Cas all but jogged - no small feat in skates - through the halls of the skating club, eager to return to Dean’s side after having been pulled away by Anna for a quick interview to promote the foundation and, hopefully, drum up further donations.

He coped so well, these days, though in his case this illness would likely never be cured completely, only dormant. But these days, the good days outnumbered the bad, and he’d learned to ride out the bad times with counselling, and medication, and the support of his family. For all intents and purposes, this was a good period, but today the stress, the anticipation, the resulting weight on his chest, it all made him antsy, and he was reluctant to be apart from Dean for too long, the steadying force in his life, the little extra grip he sometimes needed to avoid being washed away.

He would never accuse him, but Cas knew Dean probably didn’t feel all that differently, today, his smiles not always quite reaching his eyes, and his casual touches, grounding himself to Cas, had been turned up to eleven. After all, this wasn’t just Cas’ first public performance since his accident - it was Dean’s first public performance. Period.

Cas entered the rink proper, and the music was droning in the arena, a loud distraction as he looked for his husband in the dark space. Miriam, one of Cas’ novice students, was mid-performance, and if he wasn’t so wound up in nerves, Cas would probably be dazzled with pride watching her show off elements he’d seen her working so hard on these last few months.

The sigh of relief from both men when they locked eyes, Cas rounding a last corner to finally, thank God, find Dean by the gate, was palpable, almost comedic. Dean was waiting in the shadows of the bleachers with Sam and Jess, almost bouncing on his skate guards with nervous energy. Cas took his hand the instant they were close enough to touch, needing the contact to stay grounded.

Without consciously meaning to, they wound up standing close enough that it was a natural movement for Dean to bow to rest his head on Cas’ shoulder, and from the long, steady inhale, he was pretty sure Dean was smelling him. For all Dean liked to accuse _him_ of being the weird one, that was a conspicuously odd way to soothe himself.

Cas didn’t really mind. He might have been guilty of doing the same to Dean, now and then.

“Jeez, you two wanna get a room?” Sam laughed, though he must have known how worked up they both were.

“Don’t even,” Dean said, without moving. Sam tsked, but over Dean’s shoulder, Cas could see that he and Jess were both smiling.

When Dean finally lifted his head, Cas looked him up and down, and saw that his black t-shirt was stretched at an odd angle across his stomach, and Cas reached to straighten it out, tugging the fabric.

“How do I look?” Dean asked, watching Cas distract himself with the tiny details in lieu of stewing on the stage fright.

“Handsome,” Cas said, simply. He finished straightening out the shirt, and stepped back to give Dean a once over. “Good.”

“You look good, too,” Dean said.

Cas self-consciously smoothed out the front of his loose shirt, an earthy green to match the plaid flannel around Dean’s waist, a faux-casual flair that made him look blue collar and homey, though the design and construction of a costume to resemble his usual off-ice clothes without actually restricting his movement in any way had cost a small fortune.

“Thank you,” Cas said, feeling the hint of a blush touch his cheeks. He was somehow still flattered and flustered by Dean’s attentions after all this time together, these months of marriage.

Dean still seemed displeased with the way the outfit fit, and couldn’t seem to stop adjusting and fiddling with it. He futzed with the seam along the top of his pants, where the not-quite-real flannel button down was sewn into the waistband of the not-quite-denim jeans. “You know I have, like, this exact shirt, right? Why’d we have to spend so much to get a fake one made?”

“Because if it’s not sewn on, it’ll probably fall off,” Cas said. “Tying it on wouldn’t exactly be structurally sound.”

Dean grumbled, smoothing the flannel over his hips, and became utterly absorbed in picking little, invisible pieces of lint off his entire outfit.

“ _Dean_ ,” Cas said, gently taking Dean’s hands and holding them still, stopping the fidgeting, catching his eye, and holding his attention. “You’re perfect.”

Dean smiled at him, a little shyly, maybe, and Cas smiled back, because who was he to judge. Dean swooped down to close the distance between them in a soft kiss.

Cas returned it, and the fears didn’t matter anymore. They never had, and he’d just needed this - this small act of love - to remind him of that. The others - the audience, the public - didn’t matter. It was just them. This skate was just for them.

“Just promise me you won’t leave me when I embarrass us both out there,” Dean said, trying to laugh out the stress when they finally broke apart.

“You won’t,” Cas said, patting Dean’s chest fondly.

“But?” Dean asked, fishing for an answer.

“Of course, Dean,” Cas answered, with a warm smile and a matching warm feeling in his chest.

They held each other there, held each other up, steady, against the waves of adrenaline and anxiety, uncertainty and excitement. Cas nestled his head into the crook of Dean’s neck and breathed him in, as Dean had done earlier, letting his warmth and scent calm his frayed nerves.

The audience applauded for Miriam, and soon she was stepping off the rink just by the older skaters. Cas didn’t step away from Dean, couldn’t quite bear to. He could congratulate her later, he thought, and just turned his head to give his student a wave. Beaming, so bright, she waved excitedly back at him.

“Good luck!” She called, as she put her skate guards back on.

Moments away from taking the ice, so scared, Cas just smiled and tucked his face back into Dean’s shoulder before he betrayed too many of his emotions in front of one of the kids. He breathed. In, out. Dean’s hand ran up and down his back.

A voice was booming from the buzzing loudspeaker, muffled by its own echo. It was just noise, until it was their song - Wild Horses - and their names. Castiel Novak and Dean Winchester. A pair.

Cas stepped back, steadied himself, and knew he was ready. He knew that they both were.

There was a din of applause, a million miles away and simultaneously only a few seconds from their reality.

“Ready?” Dean asked, squaring himself up like he was going into battle, but met Cas’ eye, smiling.

Cas just smiled back, and took Dean’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm gonna resist my urge to apologize for all the minor mistakes I've had time to notice with having spent so very much time on this story and just talk about the good things.  
> This challenge was a trust fall on my own creative energy at a not-so-nice turning point in my life. I'd been kicked out of a Bachelor of Fine Arts program (the decision was appealed and I'm now doing so-so on academic probation) as an indirect result of a chronic illness, and I was having doubts as to my career path and my capabilities as a filmmaker. The Weak Beat started as a nice little idea I wasn't sure I could spin into 20k. It became a 65k outlet for my frustrations and self reflection around disability, depression, art, and success. I needed this story this summer, not just to challenge myself to write a longer project, to write every day, but to get me out of bed in the morning, let me consider that maybe I don't have to an Oscar winning writer/director to have a fulfilling career in the industry I love so much. It's not perfect - I've learned so much through my mistakes here that I will take onto my next project, fanfiction or original - but it's perfect to me. It's done its job already for me, and I only hope you enjoy it as much as I have.  
> Final thanks again to Supernatastic101 for the beautiful art, and to the fandom at large for being such a warm, supportive, creative community to give me this opportunity. Also to my IRL friends and family for understanding what this project means to me, and supporting it every step of the way. It's been a pretty wild six months, and I couldn't have done it without your love and support.


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